{"doi":"10.3390/cancers14215269","title":"Quantifying Liver Heterogeneity via R2*-MRI with Super-Paramagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles (SPION) to Characterize Liver Function and Tumor","abstract":"<jats:p>The use of super-paramagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) as an MRI contrast agent (SPION-CA) can safely label hepatic macrophages and be localized within hepatic parenchyma for T2*- and R2*-MRI of the liver. To date, no study has utilized the R2*-MRI with SPIONs for quantifying liver heterogeneity to characterize functional liver parenchyma (FLP) and hepatic tumors. This study investigates whether SPIONs enhance liver heterogeneity for an auto-contouring tool to identify the voxel-wise functional liver parenchyma volume (FLPV). This was the first study to directly evaluate the impact of SPIONs on the FLPV in R2*-MRI for 12 liver cancer patients. By using SPIONs, liver heterogeneity was improved across pre- and post-SPION MRI sessions. On average, 60% of the liver [range 40–78%] was identified as the FLPV in our auto-contouring tool with a pre-determined threshold of the mean R2* of the tumor and liver. This method performed well in 10 out of 12 liver cancer patients; the remaining 2 needed a longer echo time. These results demonstrate that our contouring tool with SPIONs can facilitate the heterogeneous R2* of the liver to automatically characterize FLP. This is a desirable technique for achieving more accurate FLPV contouring during liver radiation treatment planning.</jats:p>","journal":"Cancers","year":2022,"id":652610,"datarank":0.3958585994422889,"base_score":2.639057329615259,"endowment":2.639057329615259,"self_citation_contribution":0.3958585994422889,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.3958585994422889,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":13,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":null,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":false,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":null,"fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1702457,"name":"Jason Sohn","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1233839,"name":"Alexander Kirichenko","orcid":"0000-0002-6457-1190","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1702456,"name":"Danny Lee","orcid":"0000-0003-3270-1066","position":0,"is_corresponding":false}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":{"has_enrichment":true,"resolved":true,"title":"Quantifying Liver Heterogeneity via R2*-MRI with Super-Paramagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles (SPION) to Characterize Liver Function and Tumor","abstract":"<jats:p>The use of super-paramagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) as an MRI contrast agent (SPION-CA) can safely label hepatic macrophages and be localized within hepatic parenchyma for T2*- and R2*-MRI of the liver. To date, no study has utilized the R2*-MRI with SPIONs for quantifying liver heterogeneity to characterize functional liver parenchyma (FLP) and hepatic tumors. This study investigates whether SPIONs enhance liver heterogeneity for an auto-contouring tool to identify the voxel-wise functional liver parenchyma volume (FLPV). This was the first study to directly evaluate the impact of SPIONs on the FLPV in R2*-MRI for 12 liver cancer patients. By using SPIONs, liver heterogeneity was improved across pre- and post-SPION MRI sessions. On average, 60% of the liver [range 40–78%] was identified as the FLPV in our auto-contouring tool with a pre-determined threshold of the mean R2* of the tumor and liver. This method performed well in 10 out of 12 liver cancer patients; the remaining 2 needed a longer echo time. These results demonstrate that our contouring tool with SPIONs can facilitate the heterogeneous R2* of the liver to automatically characterize FLP. This is a desirable technique for achieving more accurate FLPV contouring during liver radiation treatment planning.</jats:p>","is_dataset_classified":null,"base_score":2.639057329615259,"endowment":2.639057329615259,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"views":0,"has_version_chain":false,"is_dataset":false,"is_oa":false,"pmid":"36358689","pmcid":"PMC9653969","openalex_id":"https://openalex.org/W4307434383","authors":[],"funders":[{"funder_name":"Elekta","grant_id":"","title":null}],"total_grants":1,"fwci":1.6138,"citation_percentile":0.838003,"influential_citations":0,"citation_trend":[{"year":2023,"count":3},{"year":2024,"count":3},{"year":2025,"count":5},{"year":2026,"count":2}],"oa_status":"gold","license":"cc-by","oa_locations":[{"url":"https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6694/14/21/5269/pdf?version=1666859745","host_type":"journal"},{"url":"https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6694/14/21/5269/pdf?version=1666859745","host_type":"publisher"},{"url":"https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6694/14/21/5269/pdf","host_type":"publisher"},{"url":"https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers14215269","host_type":"journal"},{"url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36358689","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://doaj.org/article/e02cf8ba0f1b4cfc8d8a3f434d3d3a9a","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/cancers14215269","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/9653969","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC9653969","host_type":"Europe_PMC"},{"url":"https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC9653969?pdf=render","host_type":"Europe_PMC"}],"fields_of_study":["Liver Disease Diagnosis and Treatment","Hepatocellular Carcinoma Treatment and Prognosis","Advanced MRI Techniques and Applications"],"mesh_terms":[],"keywords":["Nanoparticle","Paramagnetism","Iron oxide","Iron oxide nanoparticles","Function (biology)","Nuclear magnetic resonance","Magnetic resonance imaging","Chemistry","Nanotechnology","Materials science","Medicine","Biology","Radiology","Physics","Cell biology","Condensed matter physics","Metallurgy","Spion","Liver Parenchyma","Super-paramagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticle","Auto-contouring","R2*-mri","T2*-mri","Hepatic Kupffer Cells","Liver Radiation Treatment Planning","Quantifying Liver Heterogeneity","Resecting Liver Surgery"],"sdg_mappings":[{"sdg_number":0,"sdg_label":"Good health and well-being"}],"linked_datasets":[],"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"database_accessions":[{"name":"nct"}],"source":"live","citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-08-10T16:11:52.573157Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}