Reproducibility and Biological Basis of In Vivo T2* Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Liver Metastasis of Colorectal Cancer

In this study, the reproducibility of T-2* MR imaging in colorectal liver metastases was assessed and T-2* values were correlated with the expression of the hypoxia-related markers GLUT-1 and CA-IX as well as the relative vascular area, and the vessel density in resected tumors. The reproducibility of T-2* was analyzed in 18 patients with in total 22 colorectal liver metastases using the Bland and Altman method for the 16th, 50th, and 84th percentile values. Immunohistochemical staining was performed on 17 resected tumors obtained from 16 patients. The median T-2* of all liver metastases was 25.0 +/- 5.6 ms vs. 23.0 +/- 4.1 ms (median +/- st.dev.) in normal liver. The coefficient of repeatability was 11.2 ms and the limits of agreement were -13.2 ms and 9.1 ms for median T-2* values. On average, T-2* showed fair reproducibility. No correlations between T-2* values, hypoxia-and vascularity-related markers were observed. (C) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.