Abstract: Objective The aim of this study was to investigate application of T1 relaxation time of liver magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in detecting portal hypertension (PH) in patients with hepatitis B-induced liver cirrhosis (LC). Methods A total of 115 patients with hepatitis B-induced LC were admitted to our hospital between January 2019 and December 2024, all patients underwent MRI scan for detection of T1 relaxation time, and transjugular puncture for measurement and calculation of hepatic venous pressure gradient (HVPG). Multivariate Logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify influencing factors of portal hypertension in patients with hepatitis B cirrhosis and the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was drawn to analyze predicting efficacy of PH by T1 relaxation time. Results Of the 115 patients with LC, PH was found in 74 cases (64.4%); Child-Pugh score, prothrombin time (PT), liver stiffness measurement (LSM), enhanced liver fibrosis (ELF) score and MRI T1 relaxation time of liver in patients with PH were (10.7±2.7), (13.1±2.3)s, (18.0±3.2)kPa, (15.8±1.8) and (880.3±96.7)ms, all significantly greater or higher than [(7.5±1.9), (11.6±1.8)s, (14.8±1.1)kPa, (12.7±1.4) and (779.4±80.3)ms, respectively, P＜0.05] in cirrhotics without PH; multivariate Logistic regression analysis showed that PT, LSM, ELF and T1 relaxation time were all the independent impacting factors for PH in patients with LC(P＜0.05); ROC analysis demonstrated that the AUC was 0.788(95%CI:0.702-0.858), with sensitivity and specificity of 67.6% and 85.4%(Z=6.848, P＜0.001), when MRI T1 relaxation time equal to 860.0 ms was set as the cut-off-value in predicting PH in patients with LC. Conclusion Measurement of MRI T1 relaxation time of liver might help clinicians predict PH in patients with LC, which warrants further clinical investigation.

Key words: Liver cirrhosis, Portal hypertension, Magnetic resonance imaging, T1 relaxation time, Diagnosis