Comparison of Sonazoid and SonoVue in the Diagnosis of Focal Liver Lesions: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

Objective: This study aimed to compare the efficacy of Sonazoid and SonoVue in subjects with focal liver lesions.

Methods: The patients who had untreated focal solid liver lesions confirmed by B-mode ultrasonography were eligible for the study. The target lesion and whole liver were scanned by gray scale ultrasonography; then, contrast-enhanced ultrasonography was performed, and the results were evaluated blindly. The main end point was accuracy improvement with postcontrast versus precontrast ultrasound examination for diagnosis of the target lesion of interest as malignant or benign against the reference standard.

Results: There were 65 patients with 65 hepatic tumors enrolled in the study. The improvement of diagnostic accuracy was 0.30 in the Sonazoid group and 0.16 in the SonoVue group (95% confidence interval, -0.828-0.168; P = .24). Using 20% as the noninferiority margin, the upper limit of the 95% confidence interval (0.168) was less than 0.20. The number of lesions detected during the whole-liver scanning in the Sonazoid group was significantly more than that detected in the SonoVue group (P = .024).

Conclusion: The diagnosis value of Sonazoid is noninferior to SonoVue, and this new contrast agent can improves the whole-liver image quality.

Keywords: Sonazoid; SonoVue; detection efficacy; diagnostic efficacy; focal liver lesion.