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Congress: ECR25
Poster Number: C-14335
Type: Poster: EPOS Radiologist (scientific)
Authorblock: X-P. Meng, X. Fang; Wuxi City/CN
Disclosures:
Xiang-Pan Meng: Nothing to disclose
Xiangming Fang: Nothing to disclose
Keywords: Abdomen, CT, Diagnostic procedure, Cancer
Purpose Vessels encapsulating tumor clusters (VETC) have been implicated as a marker of unfavorable prognosis in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).1 VETC is associated with increased tumor aggressiveness and a higher likelihood of early recurrence following treatment.1 Noninvasive imaging techniques such as computed tomography (CT) and ethoxybenzyl-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (EOB-MRI) have the potential to identify VETC and may serve as useful tools for prognostication.2-4 However, the imaging criteria used to assess VETC, including the SN (size and necrosis) score, the VETC nomogram,...
Read more Methods and materials This retrospective study included 191 patients with a single HCC lesion who underwent preoperative CT and EOB-MRI at three tertiary care centers between January 2017 and May 2021. The patients were evaluated for VETC using three previously reported radiological feature-based criteria: the SN score, the VETC nomogram, and Fan’s model. The diagnostic accuracy of these criteria was assessed by calculating the area under the curve (AUC) for each method on both CT and EOB-MRI images. Comparisons of AUCs between the...
Read more Results Out of the 191 patients, 94 (49.2%) were pathologically confirmed as VETC-positive. No significant differences in diagnostic performance were observed between CT and EOB-MRI across all criteria (all P > 0.05). However, the VETC nomogram, which incorporates tumor size, necrosis, and enhancement pattern, demonstrated superior performance compared to both the SN score and Fan's model. On CT, the AUC for the VETC nomogram was 0.825, compared to 0.716 for the SN score and 0.588 for Fan’s model. Similarly, on EOB-MRI,...
Read more Conclusion This study confirms that the radiological feature-based criteria for assessing VETC in HCC are reliable and applicable across both CT and EOB-MRI. Among the evaluated criteria, the VETC nomogram exhibited the highest discriminatory power for identifying VETC-positive HCC and was significantly associated with early recurrence, highlighting its potential as an important noninvasive tool for prognostication in HCC.
Read more References 1. Liu K, Dennis C, Prince DS, et al. Vessels that encapsulate tumour clusters vascular pattern in hepatocellular carcinoma. JHEP Rep. 2023;5(8):100792.2. Fan Y, Yu Y, Hu M, et al. Imaging features based on Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRI for predicting vessels encapsulating tumor clusters (VETC) in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. Br J Radiol. 2021;94(1119):20200950. 3. Feng Z, Li H, Zhao H, et al. Preoperative CT for Characterization of Aggressive Macrotrabecular-Massive Subtype and Vessels That Encapsulate Tumor Clusters Pattern in Hepatocellular Carcinoma. Radiology. 2021;300(1):219-229. 4. Chen FM,...
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