Quantitative analysis of gadoxetic acid-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging predicts histological grade of hepatocellular carcinoma.

Objective: To confirm the histological grade of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) by gadoxetic acid-enhanced MRI.

Methods: Ninety-five HCC patients underwent gadoxetic acid-enhanced MRI before surgical intervention. The correlations among the signal absolute enhancement, contrast enhancement ratio (CER) and tumor histological grade were analyzed.

Results: The correlation between CER of tumor-to-liver and the grades of tumor differentiation is the most significant negative. The k-value for the CER of tumor-to-liver and histopathologic analysis is 0.62, which gives evidence of good agreement.

Conclusion: The quantitative analysis of gadoxetic acid-enhanced MRI can predict the histological grades of small HCCs.