In this issue of the European Journal of Internal Medicine, M.N. Cruz and colleagues
present a review of current liver imaging techniques [
[1]
], the potential of which has expanded from mere imaging, with regard to viewing inside
the body, as if it were a macroscopic autoptic sectorial exam; but, in living bodies,
to the exploration of organ and cellular functions. This evolution has taken place,
thanks to the digital revolution, and has boosted in the last ten to fifteen years,
in keeping with the rapidly increasing speed of computing machines. Functional imaging
means that radiological techniques, based on X-rays or magnetic resonance (MR) or
ultrasound (US) are utilized to provide information about the function of whole organs,
or of specific cell types or of liver circulation, or even about the expression of
molecular biomarkers at a microscopic level. The review focuses primarily in depth
on the advancement of MR techniques [
- Cruz M.
- Aguiar Ferreira A.
- Papanikolaou N.
- Banerjee R.
- Caseiro Alves F.
New boundaries of liver imaging: from morphology to function.
Eur J Internal Med. 2020; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejim.2020.06.004
[1]
]. Indeed, the techniques that have advanced most are MR and US. This is in keeping
with the fact that CT implies X-rays, the utilization of which and particularly repeated
utilization over time (to monitor functional changes over time) must be limited due
to radiation hazards. Moreover, X-rays are less affected by changes in living structures
than MR and US and were felt less apt to provide functional information, at least
as of today. There have been no dramatic general advances in Positron Emission Tomography
for the liver in recent years for the standard clinical practice, but this technique
is to be listed as a fully functional imaging, because it assesses metabolic processes
in the body, like cellular activity in terms of glucidic metabolism (18-Fludeoxyglucose
PET) or of choline uptake (choline-11 carbon) just to make a few examples of most
commonly utilized tracers, which are standard clinical practice. Several other biomarkers
for different metabolic processes have been introduced or are tested in recent times,
to assess different diseases, not limited to the oncological field [
- Cruz M.
- Aguiar Ferreira A.
- Papanikolaou N.
- Banerjee R.
- Caseiro Alves F.
New boundaries of liver imaging: from morphology to function.
Eur J Internal Med. 2020; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejim.2020.06.004
[2]
], as some promising tracers are apparently able to assess specific hepatocellular
and biliary functions [
[3]
].Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: July 15, 2020
Accepted:
July 10,
2020
Received in revised form:
July 7,
2020
Received:
June 4,
2020
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 European Federation of Internal Medicine. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
