Imaging Techniques for the Measurement of Liver Volume

Assessment of liver volume may be of great relevance in the clinical management of several hepatic diseases as well as systemic disorders associated with liver involvement. With the increasing use of innovative strategies in liver resection and partial transplantation, in vivo measurement of liver volume has become of major interest. Liver volume has also been proposed as a sensitive indicator of ectopic adiposity and associated metabolic disorders in obese subjects. Several formulae have been developed for the estimation of standard liver size, based on anthropometric measures. Most data have been generated in the research areas of liver transplantation and computation of the body surface area, body weight, age, and/or gender. Several methods for measuring liver volume using Computerized Tomography (CT) or Magnetic Resonance (MR) have been described, which apply automatic or semiautomatic segmentation and subsequent reconstruction by the summation of the products of section thickness and area of the segmented liver in each section. Ultrasonography has also been employed for the estimation of liver volume. The left lateral segment of the liver can be easily visualized in its entirety by ultrasound examination, and measurement of the hepatic left lobe volume has been employed to objectively evaluate the extent of liver involvement in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease of obese subjects.