Quantitative analysis of gadoxetic acid-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging predicts histological grade of hepatocellular carcinoma

Objective To confirm the histological grade of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) by gadoxetic acid-enhanced MRI. Methods Ninety-five HCC patients underwent gadoxetic acid-enhanced MRI before surgical intervention. The correlations among the signal absolute enhancement, contrast enhancement ratio (CER) and tumor histological grade were analyzed. Results The correlation between CER of tumor-to-liver and the grades of tumor differentiation is the most significant negative. The k-value for the CER of tumor-to-liver and histopathologic analysis is 0.62, which gives evidence of good agreement. Conclusion The quantitative analysis of gadoxetic acid-enhanced MRI can predict the histological grades of small HCCs.