Subtyping of hepatocellular adenomas using Gd-EOB-DTPA: a qualitative and quantitative analysis.

Background: The goal of medical imaging is not only to identify the entity "hepatocellular adenoma," but to detect typical magnetic resonance (MR) patterns of the subtypes so that lesions with a higher malignant transformation rate could be differentiated from those that should just be controlled.

Purpose: To evaluate the differentiation between subtypes of hepatocellular adenomas using hepatobiliary specific contrast agent (Gd-EOB-DTPA) in MR imaging.

Material/methods: A total of 11 patients with 39 lesions with histologically proven hepatocellular adenomas were evaluated. Of the, 34 were inflammatory hepatocellular adenomas (IHCA) and 5 were HNF1α adenomas. No β-catenin-mutated adenoma was found. In all patients, a standard protocol considering the guidelines of the international consensus conference of Gd-EOB-DTPA was performed in a 1.5-T scanner. Besides a qualitative analysis of all sequences, we measured the quantitative signal intensity (SI) ratio in all examinations.

Results: Qualitative analysis showed that best sequences for differentiation of HNF1α adenomas from IHCA were T1-weighted (T1W) precontrast ( = 0.03) and portalvenous phase ( < 0.0001) as well as arterial phase ( = 0.002). All adenomas were hypointense in hepatobiliary phase (15 min). The quantitative analyses of the SI ratio and of lesion-to-liver contrast (LLC) ratio show statistically significant differences in T1W precontrast (SI:  = 0.035; LLC:  = 0.049) and portalvenous phase (SI:  = 0.002; LLC:  = 0.002).

Conclusion: Subtyping of hepatocellular adenomas using Gd-EOB-DTPA is possible due to qualitative and quantitative analyses regarding T1W precontrast and portalvenous phase. In addition, the SI ratio and liver-to-lesion contrast ratio in the arterial phase gave additional qualitative information for differentiation.