Quantitative MRI; a game changer for identifying the chronic liver disease patients most at risk of poor clinical outcomes

Oxford, August 6th, 2020. Perspectum’s cT1® is the best non-invasive predictor of clinical outcomes in chronic liver disease (CLD) patients, new research published in Liver International finds.

As chronic liver disease (CLD) prevalence is at a public health crisis level, the ability to accurately and reliably identify those patients most at risk of poor clinical outcomes is paramount to ensure best care for patients and to reduce the burden on healthcare systems.

Traditionally, the gold standard for prediction of clinical outcomes for CLD patients has been biopsy, which is inherently invasive and has variable results. Non-invasive, reliable and accurate prognostic tools allow healthcare providers and payors to assess who is most at risk of adverse outcomes and develop treatment plans for optimum timely patient care, to potentially change the course of the disease and improve clinical outcomes.

cT1, a proprietary biomarker provided by Perspectum’s LiverMultiScan® technology, was shown to be the best non-invasive predictor of clinical outcomes in patients with CLD. The study assessed the ability of cT1, Transient Elastography (TE; FibroScan), blood tests and biopsy to predict clinical outcomes. cT1 outperformed both FibroScan’s TE and the FIB-4 blood test and had similar performance to an invasive liver biopsy. cT1 also had the best reliability of the non-invasive tests evaluated. The study, which started in 2011, is an extension of the team’s previous work, including more patients and a longer follow up period (Pavlides et al., 2016). It bolsters the evidence that for the assessment of fibrosis, the non-invasive cT1 biomarker provides similar outcomes information as liver biopsy and outperforms other less reliable non-invasive tests such as FibroScan and the FIB-4.

Dr Matt Kelly, Perspectum’s Chief Innovation Officer commented, “This study demonstrates how rapid MRI scanning can be used to identify those patients at greatest risk of poor clinical outcomes. For example, a patient with a liver cT1 value above the predetermined threshold of 825ms was over 10 times more likely to experience a clinical event than one below this threshold.”

Read the paper here: