Clinical use of shear-wave elastography for detecting liver fibrosis in children and adolescents with cystic fibrosis.

Background: Complications from liver cirrhosis are a leading cause of death in children with cystic fibrosis. Identifying children at risk for developing liver cirrhosis and halting its progression are critical to reducing liver-associated mortality.

Objective: Quantitative US imaging, such as shear-wave elastography (SWE), might improve the detection of liver fibrosis in children with cystic fibrosis (CF) over gray-scale US alone.

Progression of corpus callosum diffusion-tensor imaging values during a period of signal changes consistent with myelination.

Objective: Changes in signal intensity on T1- and T2-weighted MR images consistent with myelination in the corpus callosum occur during months 3-9 of postnatal life and occur earlier in the splenium than in the genu. We hypothesized that the rate of change in diffusion-tensor imaging parameters in the first year of life would be greater in the splenium, especially during months 3-9.

Subjects And Methods: Fifty-two infants (age range, 0-52 weeks) underwent one MRI examination with a six-direction diffusion-tensor imaging sequence.

Diffusion tensor imaging for evaluation of the childhood brain and pediatric white matter disorders.

Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging has been used by investigators and clinicians to assess the development of the brain in childhood to understand both patterns of normal growth and patterns by which a maturing brain may deviate from normal. Advanced MR techniques such as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) have gained prominence as a means of assessing brain development. This review explains the sequence of brain maturation and the means by which DTI can be used to assess it in normal children.

Correlation of apparent diffusion coefficient and fractional anisotropy values in the developing infant brain.

Objective: The purpose of our study was to correlate decrease in apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and increase in fractional anisotropy (FA) in various white matter (WM) regions using diffusion tenor imaging (DTI) within the first year of life.

Materials And Methods: We performed DTI on 53 infants and measured FA and ADC within 10 WM regions important in brain development. For each region, we calculated the slope of ADC as a function of FA, the correlation coefficient (r) and correlation of determination (r(2)).