A gadoxetic-acid enhancement flux analysis of small liver nodules (≤2 cm) in patients at high risk of hepatocellular carcinoma

Hebing Chen; Jiazheng Wang; Tingting Guo; Tianhe Ye; Jiayu Wan; Peng Sun; Feng Pan; Lian Yang

doi:10.1016/j.ejrad.2023.110911

A gadoxetic-acid enhancement flux analysis of small liver nodules (≤2 cm) in patients at high risk of hepatocellular carcinoma

Eur J Radiol. 2023 Aug:165:110911. doi: 10.1016/j.ejrad.2023.110911. Epub 2023 Jun 2.

Authors

Hebing Chen¹, Jiazheng Wang², Tingting Guo¹, Tianhe Ye¹, Jiayu Wan¹, Peng Sun², Feng Pan³, Lian Yang⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Radiology, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China; Hubei Key Laboratory of Molecular Imaging, Wuhan 430022, China.
² Clinical & Technical Solutions, Philips Healthcare, Beijing 100600, China.
³ Department of Radiology, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China; Hubei Key Laboratory of Molecular Imaging, Wuhan 430022, China. Electronic address: uh_fengpan@hust.edu.cn.
⁴ Department of Radiology, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China; Hubei Key Laboratory of Molecular Imaging, Wuhan 430022, China. Electronic address: yanglian@hust.edu.cn.

PMID: 37300937
DOI: 10.1016/j.ejrad.2023.110911

Abstract

Purpose: To discriminate between benignities and hepatocellular carcinomas (HCCs) in patients at high risk of HCC using a novel enhancement flux analysis for gadoxetic-acid enhanced MRI.

Method: This study retrospectively collected 181 liver nodules in 156 patients at high risk of HCC who underwent gadoxetic acid-enhanced MRI examinations with following surgical resection from 1st August 2017 to 31st December 2021 as the training set; another 42 liver nodules in 36 patients were prospectively collected from 1st January 2022 to 1st October 2022 as the test set. The time-intensity curves (TICs) of liver nodules were formed with consecutive time points: 0 s, 20 s, 1 min, 2 min, 5 min, 10 min, 15 min, and 20 min since contrast injection. A novel enhancement flux analysis was applied by using a biexponential function fitting to distinguish benignities and HCC. Besides, previously published models including maximum enhancement ratio (ER_max), percentage signal ratio (PSR), and ER_max+PSR were compared. The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUCs) were compared among these methods.

Results: The novel enhancement flux analysis showed the highest AUCs in the training set (0.897, 95%CI: 0.833-0.960) and the test set (0.859, 95%CI: 0.747-0.970) among all models. The AUCs of PSR, ER_max and ER_max+PSR were 0.801 (95%CI: 0.710-0.891), 0.620 (95%CI: 0.510-0.729), and 0.799 (95%CI: 0.709-0.889) in the training set, and were 0.701 (95%CI: 0.539-0.863), 0.529 (95%CI: 0.342-0.717), and 0.708 (95%CI: 0.549-0.867) in the test set.

Conclusions: The biexponential flux analysis for gadoxetic-acid enhanced MRI presents a better potential in accurate diagnosis of small HCC nodules.

Keywords: Differential diagnosis; Gadoxetic acid; Hepatocellular carcinoma; Kinetics; Magnetic resonance imaging.

MeSH terms

Carcinoma, Hepatocellular* / diagnostic imaging
Carcinoma, Hepatocellular* / pathology
Contrast Media
Gadolinium DTPA
Humans
Liver Neoplasms* / diagnostic imaging
Liver Neoplasms* / pathology
Magnetic Resonance Imaging / methods
Retrospective Studies
Sensitivity and Specificity

Substances

gadolinium ethoxybenzyl DTPA
Contrast Media
Gadolinium DTPA