Systematic review: The diagnostic efficacy of gadoxetic acid-enhanced MRI for liver fibrosis staging

•Gadoxetate disodium-enhanced MRI has a high diagnostic accuracy in staging liver fibrosis.•Gadoxetate disodium-enhanced MRI had the highest sensitivity for staging F4 subset.•A prospective study with large sample in patients showed higher diagnostic efficacy. To evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of gadoxetic acid-enhanced MRI for the staging of liver fibrosis by meta-analysis. PubMed/Medline, EMBASE, the Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library were searched. Studies were included according to their eligibility and the exclusion criteria. The Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies 2 tool was used to assess the methodologic quality. The bivariate random-effects model was used to obtain the pooled summary estimates, heterogeneity, and the area under summary receiver operating characteristic curves (AUROC). Meta-regression was performed to discover the source of heterogeneity and compare certain some subsets for their capacity to stage hepatic fibrosis by AUROC comparison. A total of 20 original articles (1936 patients) were included. Most studies had a low risk of bias and minimal concerns regarding applicability. The summary AUROC values of gadoxetic acid-enhanced MRI in staging the liver fibrosis ≥ F1, ≥ F2, ≥ F3, and F4 subsets were 0.92, 0.87, 0.89, and 0.91, respectively. Studies with populations equal to or more than 100 had a significantly higher sensitivity (84 %) and specificity (91 %) than those with populations less than 100 (70 % and 77 %, respectively, P < 0.01). Studies of a prospective design exhibited a significantly higher sensitivity (94 %) and specificity (94 %) than those of a retrospective design (75 % and 84 %, respectively, P < 0.01). Our meta-analysis shows the high diagnostic efficacy of gadoxetic acid-enhanced MRI in the staging of liver fibrosis. A prospective study with more than one hundred patients showed higher diagnostic efficacy.