3-D Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound Fusion Imaging: A New Technique to Evaluate the Ablative Margin of Radiofrequency Ablation for Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Abstract

To investigate the feasibility of assessing the ablative margin (AM) of radiofrequency ablation (RFA) for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with 3-D contrast-enhanced ultrasound fusion imaging (3-DCEUS-FI), pre- and post-RFA 3-DCEUS images of 84 patients with HCC were fused for two radiologists to independently assess the AMs. The success rate, duration and influencing factors for registration; inter-observer agreement for AM classification; and local tumor progression (LTP) rate were evaluated. The success rate of the automatic registration (AR), which was completed within 4–12 s, was 57.1% (48/84). The duration and success rate of the interactive registration (IR) were 4.2 ± 1.8 min and 91.7% (77/84) for radiologist A and 4.8 ± 2.1 min and 91.7% (77/84) for radiologist B, respectively. The multivariate analysis demonstrated that the pre-RFA image quality, number of vessels (≥3 mm) and presence of acoustic shadow were independent factors for AR (p < 0.05), while the number of vessels was an independent factor for IR (p = 0.001). The agreement between observers was excellent (kappa = 0.914). LTP rate was significantly higher for AMs <5 mm than for AMs ≥5 mm (p = 0.024). Quantitatively evaluating the AM immediately after RFA for HCC with 3-DCEUS-FI was feasible.