Preliminary Study of MR Diffusion Tensor Imaging of the Liver for the Diagnosis of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

To evaluate the feasibility of differentiating between hepatocellular carcinomas (HCC) and healthy liver using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). All subjects underwent an abdominal examination on a 3.0T MRI scanner. Two radiologists independently scored the image quality (IQ). An optimal set of DTI parameters was obtained from a group of fifteen volunteers with multiple b-values (100, 300, 500, and 800 s/mm2) and various diffusion-encoding directions (NED = 6, 9, and 12)using two way ANOVA analysis. Eighteen Patients with HCC underwent DTI scans with the optimized parameters. Fractional anisotropy(FA) and average apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values were measured. The differences of FA and ADC values between liver healthy region and HCC lesion were compared through paired t tests. There were no significant changes in liver IQ and FA/ADC values with increased NED(P >0.05), whereas the liver IQ and FA/ADC values decreased significantly with increased b-values(P