State of the art of magnetic resonance imaging ( MRI ) in evaluation of focal hepatic lesions

Abstract

Background: The recent developments in (MRI) sequences for the upper abdomen comprise unenhanced diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), and (DCE) MRI. DWI allows improved detection of small (< 10 mm) focal liver lesions and useful as a road map sequence. The aim of this work was to study recent and advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques in the evaluation of focal hepatic lesions. Methods: this study included 40 patients, patients underwent assessment with recent MRI sequences (DWI), DCE MRI, T2-weighted imaging, steady-state free precession (SSFP) imaging and T1 in-phase/out-phase imaging. Results: Half of the studied patients were females. Age ranged from 30 to 67 years with mean 48.825 years. Forty percent of patients had right-side lesion while 22.5% had left side lesion. On HPE of the studied patients, 52.5% had malignant growth while the remaining 47.5% had benign lesions. About 23% had HCC. One fifth had hemorrhagic cyst and the same percentage had metastatic lesion. Adenoma was present in 7.5%, There is statistically significant relation between nature of foci and ADC value (significantly higher in benign lesions). ROC curve of ADC in diagnosis of benign nature of focal hepatic masses among the studied patients; area under curve 0.945, (p < 0.05). Conclusion: diffusion-weighted MRI sequence with quantitative ADC measurements should be used as an additional sequence to supplement conventional MRI protocol studies for proper detection (using low b values) and characterization (using high b values) of focal liver lesions