Diagnostic Efficacies of Sonazoid-CEUS and EOB-MRI in Patients With High Risk of HCC

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fifth most common cancer. Patients with HCCs usually have a poor prognosis. Hepatocarcinogenesis is an intricate and multistep process. Detecting and staging early HCC in patients with liver cirrhosis are still challenging for imaging techniques. Contrast-enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS) and gadoxetic acid-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (EOB-MRI) are widely used in clinical practice. EOB-MRI has advantages of high detecting rate for small lesions, high sensitivity of hepatobiliary phase and extensive image information. Sonazoid has the advantage of offering a unique post-vascular phase, also called the Kupffer phase. Therefore, malignant tumors with few or no Kupffer cells appear as contrast defects, with respect to the relatively well-enhanced surrounding liver in the postvascular phase. The diagnostic efficacies of these two imaging methods have not been well studied. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to compare the efficacies of Sonazoid-CEUS and EOB-MRI in patients with high risk of HCC, and to compare the detection ability for malignant tumors by Kupffer phase and hepatobiliary phase.