Imaging the pediatric liver: MRI and CT.

The livers of 27 children, 2 weeks to 16 years old, were examined with MRI and CT. Fourteen children had normal livers, 9 had focal liver disease, and 4 had diffuse liver disease. Normal intrahepatic venous anatomy was visualized more frequently with MRI than with CT, regardless of presence of disease, type of disease, or age. Focal hepatic lesions were either iso- or hypointense on relatively T1-weighted images and were hyperintense on T2-weighted images regardless of the pathology. In three cases, lesions seen with MRI were not detected with CT. In two other cases, CT was interpreted as equivocal or abnormal, but the liver was normal on MRI. MRI was superior to CT for evaluation of patency of the intrahepatic portion of the inferior vena cava. Other than in cases of fatty infiltration, CT provided no information additional to MRI. MRI has the potential to replace CT as a technique for imaging the pediatric liver in many cases, especially for infants and young children.