2009 Volume 50 Issue 12 Pages 703-710
We retrospectively evaluated the detectability of hypervascular hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) on diffusion-weighted MR imaging (DWI) in 52 patients, and compared that on contrast-enhanced CT (enhanced CT). One hundred and seventy tumor lesions, showing hypervascular tumor on CT during hepatic arteriography and hypoperfusion area on CT dyring arterial portography prior to achievement of transcatheter arterial chemoembolization, were referred as the gold standard for the comparison of DWI with enhanced CT. Sensitivity for the detection of tumors was 78.2% on DWI and 80.0% on enhanced CT. The detected number of tumors in each patient was equal in 65.3% of them on both modalities and superior in 13.5% of them on DWI without significant difference. The superiority of DWI to enhanced CT in the patients with previous treatment was shown in 20.8% of patients. We suggest that DWI could be useful modality for the detection of hypervascular HCC without using contrast agent and radiation exposure.
