Table 2.
Analysis of the enhancement patterns in the arterial and venous/delayed phase according to the different imaging techniques.
| Arterial phase |
Venous/delayed phase |
Hepatobiliary phase* |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CEUS (n = 27) | CT (n = 34) | MRI (n = 17) | CEUS (n = 27) | CT (n = 34) | MRI (n = 17) | MRI (n = 17) | |
| No hyper-enhancement (overall) (%) | 5 (19) | 4 (12) | 3 (18) | 27 (100) | 22 (65) | 11 (65) | 15 (88) |
| − Hypo-enhanced (%) | 1 (4) | 0 | 0 | 24 (89) | 8 (24) | 5 (30) | |
| − Iso-enhanced (%) | 4 (15) | 4 (12) | 3 (18) | 3 (11) | 14 (41) | 6 (35) | |
| Hyper-enhancement (overall) (%) | 22 (81) | 30 (88) | 14 (82) | 0 | 12 (35) | 6 (35) | 2 (12) |
| − Homogeneously hyper-enhanced (%) | 15 (55) | 8 (23) | 8 (47) | 0 | 1 (3) | 3 (18) | |
| − Peripherally rim-like hyper-enhanced (%) | 7 (26) | 17 (50) | 5 (29) | 0 | 8 (23) | 2 (12) | |
| − Heterogeneously hyper-enhanced (%) | 0 | 5 (15) | 1 (6) | 0 | 3 (9) | 1 (5) | |
*Hepatobiliary phase appearance at MRI is reported in the table but not analyzed in the text as not part of the European Association for the Study of the Liver and American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases guidelines for the non-invasive diagnosis of HCC in cirrhosis.
CEUS: contrast-enhanced ultrasound; CT: computed tomography; HCC: hepatocellular carcinoma; MRI: magnetic resonance imaging.