Detecting hepatocellular carcinoma: value of unenhanced or arterial phase CT imaging or both used in conjunction with conventional portal venous phase contrast-enhanced CT imaging.

Abstract

Because rates of detection of hypervascular neoplasms by conventional dynamic incremental-bolus CT are lower than rates of detection of hypovascular tumors by CT and because both unenhanced CT imaging and arterial phase helical CT imaging may increase the detection of hypervascular tumors, such as hepatocellular carcinoma, we evaluated the value of unenhanced and arterial phase CT imaging used in conjunction with conventional portal venous phase CT imaging in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.Unenhanced and biphasic helical contrast-enhanced CT studies were performed on 81 patients with proven hepatocellular carcinoma. Arterial phase and portal venous phase images were obtained at 20-50 sec and at 60-100 sec, respectively. Three blinded readers evaluated portal venous phase images for the number of liver lesions. On separate dates, the readers compared the arterial phase images with the portal venous phase images and the unenhanced images with the portal venous phase images. The readers recorded the ...