Detection of hepatocellular carcinoma in a population at risk: iodine-enhanced multidetector CT and/or gadoxetic acid-enhanced 3.0 T MRI

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the diagnostic performance of iodine-enhanced multidetector CT and gadoxetic acid-enhanced 3.0 Tesla (T) MRI for detection of hepatocellular carcinoma of patients. DESIGN: Retrospective, multicentre cohort study. SETTING: The Gong’an County People’s Hospital, Gong’an County, China and the First People’s Hospital of Jingzhou City, China. PARTICIPANTS: Reports of CT, MRI and liver biopsies/histopathology data of a total of 815 patients who at risk were reviewed. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: The lesions that possessed detection in the plain scan phase, enhanced arterial phase and/or enhanced portal phase of CT images and the lesions that possessed enhancements in the plain scan phase, enhanced arterial phase, enhanced portal phase and/or hepatobiliary phases of MRI were considered hepatocellular carcinoma. The decision of hepatocellular carcinoma was made based on the current Liver Imaging and Data Reporting System for diagnosing hepatocellular carcinoma. RESULTS: True positive hepatocellular carcinoma (563 vs 521, p=0.0314), true negative hepatocellular carcinoma (122 vs 91, p=0.0275), false positive hepatocellular carcinoma (88 vs 123, p=0.0121), false negative hepatocellular carcinoma (42 vs 80, p=0.0005), specificity (58.10 vs 42.52, p=0.0478) and negative clinical utility (0.1 vs 0.073, p=0.0386) were superior for gadoxetic acid-enhanced 3.0 T MRI than those of iodine-enhanced multidetector CT. Sensitivity and accuracy for gadoxetic acid-enhanced 3.0 T MRI were 93.06% and 77.40 %, respectively, and those for iodine-enhanced multidetector CT were 86.69% and 75.09 %, respectively. Likelihood to detect hepatocellular carcinoma for gadoxetic acid-enhanced 3.0 T MRI was 0–0.894 diagnostic confidence/lesion, and that for iodine-enhanced multidetector CT was 0–0.887 diagnostic confidence/lesion. CONCLUSION: Gadoxetic acid-enhanced 3.0 T MRI facilitates the confidence of initiation of treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: III. TECHNICAL EFFICACY STAGE: 4.