ABSTRACT
Objective To evaluate the clinical value of CT/MR-contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) image fusion in immediate assessment for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)ablation.Methods Patients diagnosed with HCC to receive ablation therapy were randomly divided into two groups.The ablation for each patient was performed according to their pre-ablation plan.Immediate assessments for the ablation were performed using CT/MR-CEUS image fusion (IF group)and CEUS (CEUS group)separately and whether the need for additional ablations was decided and performed during the therapy.The therapy efficacy was evaluated with enhanced CT or MR 1 month after each complete ablation treatment.Results There were 101 patients with 131 nodules in IF group,and 15.1% of the nodules needed additional ablation according the immediate assessment during the therapy.The complete ablation rate of IF group was 99.2%(125/126).On the other hand,there were 93 patients with 122 nodules in CEUS group,and 4.2% of the nodules needed additional ablation according the immediate assessment during the therapy.The complete ablation rate of CEUS group was 94.2% (113/120).IF group has significantly higher additional ablation rate and complete ablation rate than CEUS group (P <0.05).Conclusions CT/MR-CEUS image fusion can further improve ablation efficacy with accurate intraoperative evaluation and guidance of additional ablation compared with CEUS.
ABSTRACT
Objective To evaluate the clinical value of intraoperative image fusion assisted contrastenhanced ultrasound (CEUS) in real-time assessing the curative effect on radiofrequency ablation of hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC).Methods From November 2010 to August 2011,the patients with HCC which would accept radiofrequency ablation (RFA) in our hospital were divided into image fusion assisted CEUS group and conventional CEUS group.The HCC lesion in each group was named as difficult lesion if it was invisible in B-mode ultrasound,larger than 50 mm in diameter or the puncuture route was affected by lung,ribs or blood vessels.Ten minutes after RFA,two groups of patients were performed intraoperative image fusion assisted CEUS examination and conventional CEUS examination respectively.All the patients received CT/MRI one month after ablation to decide whether the HCC had been completely ablated.Difference of complete ablation rate of HCC was compared between the two groups as well as between the difficult lesions in each group.Results Forty-eight lesions in 39 patients were enrolled in image fusion assisted CEUS group including 19 difficult lesions.Sixty-eight lesions in 53 patients were enrolled in conventional CEUS group including 18 difficult lesions.No statistical difference was found between the two groups in lesion size,proportion of difficult lesions,proportion of lesions received TACE or RFA plus PEIT (P =0.052,P =0.136,P =0.185,P =1.000).Postoperation following-up results demonstrated that complete ablation rate of HCC in navigation assisted CEUS group(100 ％,48/48) was not statistically higher than that in conventional CEUS group(92.6％,63/68) (P =0.145).But the difficult lesions in navigation assisted CEUS group (100％,19/19) had statistically higher complete ablation rate than that in conventional CEUS group(72.2％,13/18) (P =0.020).Conclusions Intraoperative navigation assisted CEUS could real-time assess the curative effect on RFA of HCC,especially in the difficult lesions,and could be used as the beneficial supplement of the conventional CEUS.