Dynamic Sonography of Hepatic Tumors

Abstract

OBJECTIVE. Our objectives were to propose and evaluate a dynamic sonography protocol for the characterization of hepatic tumors.SUBJECTS AND METHODS. The subjects were 107 patients with focal liver lesions that initially had been found on conventional sonograms. The final diagnoses for the lesions were hepatocellular carcinoma in 60 patients, cholangiocellular carcinoma in six, metastatic carcinoma in 24, hemangioma in 10, and focal fat-spared region in seven.The pulse inversion harmonic imaging mode and a galactose-based contrast agent (Levovist) were used. Dynamic sonography was designed to obtain vascular-phase (composed of the arterial phase and the portal phase) images of the focal lesion and liver-parenchymal-phase images of the whole liver in a series obtained after a bolus injection of the contrast agent.RESULTS. If the whole-tumor or mosaic enhancement patterns (arterial phase) and/or the reticular enhancement (parenchymal phase) are regarded as positive findings for hepatocellular carcinoma, the...