Differentiation between combined hepatocellular cholangiocarcinoma and hepatocellular carcinoma: comparison of diagnostic performance between ultrasomics-based model and CEUS LI-RADS v2017

BACKGROUND: The imaging findings of combined hepatocellular cholangiocarcinoma (CHC) may be similar to those of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). CEUS LI-RADS may not perform well in distinguishing CHC from HCC. Studies have shown that radiomics has an excellent imaging analysis ability. This study aimed to establish and confirm an ultrasomics model for differentiating CHC from HCC. METHODS: Between 2004 and 2016, we retrospectively identified 53 eligible CHC patients and randomly included 106 eligible HCC patients with a ratio of HCC:CHC = 2:1, all of whom were categorized according to Contrast-Enhanced (CE) ultrasonography (US) Liver Imaging Reporting and Data System (LI-RADS) version 2017. The model based on ultrasomics features of CE US was developed in 74 HCC and 37 CHC and confirmed in 32 HCC and 16 CHC. The diagnostic performance of the LI-RADS or ultrasomics model was assessed by the area under the curve (AUC), accuracy, sensitivity and specificity. RESULTS: In the entire and validation cohorts, 67.0% and 81.3% of HCC cases were correctly assigned to LR-5 or LR-TIV contiguous with LR-5, and 73.6% and 87.5% of CHC cases were assigned to LR-M correctly. Up to 33.0% of HCC and 26.4% of CHC were misclassified by CE US LI-RADS. A total of 90.6% of HCC as well as 87.5% of CHC correctly diagnosed by the ultrasomics model in the validation cohort. The AUC, accuracy, sensitivity of the ultrasomics model were higher though without significant difference than those of CE US LI-RADS in the validation cohort. CONCLUSION: The proposed ultrasomics model showed higher ability though the difference was not significantly different for differentiating CHC from HCC, which may be helpful in clinical diagnosis. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12880-022-00765-x.