| Summary: | Purpose To compare the per-patient diagnostic performance of simulated abbreviated MRI
(AMRI) to that of conventional MRI (CMRI) with full-sequence dynamic gadoxetic acid (GA) enhancement
for early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) screening in high-risk patients.
Materials and Methods A total of 201 consecutive patients at high-risk for HCC, who underwent
3T liver MRI, were included in this retrospective study. The AMRI protocol comprised T2-weighted
imaging, hepatobiliary phase imaging after GA injection, and diffusion-weighted imaging. For
each patient, two AMRI and CMRI image sets were independently reviewed by two radiologists.
Inter-reader agreement was assessed using Cohen’s kappa value. A composite reference standard
was used to determine the diagnostic performance of each image set for each reader.
Results A total of 93 HCCs were detected in 79 patients. The inter-reader agreement was almost
perfect for both image sets (κ = 0.839, 0.948). In AMRI, the per-patient sensitivity and negative
predictive values (NPV) were 94.9% and 96.4%, respectively. In CMRI, the per-patient sensitivity
and NPV were 96.2% and 97.5%, respectively.
Conclusion AMRI, using only three sequences, had a comparable diagnostic performance to
CMRI in screening early-stage HCC. AMRI could be an alternative HCC screening tool for highrisk
HCC patients.
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