MRI features and pathological grading of hepatic neuroendocrine neoplasm / 中华肝胆外科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To compare the MRI features of hepatic neuroendocrine tumors (NET G1,G2) and neuroendocrine carcinomas (NEC G3),as well as to improve the accuracy in hierarchical diagnosis.Methods Twenty patients with histopathologically proven NET and nineteen patients with histopathologically proven NEC were retrospectively analyzed.The morphological and MR signal features were compared.Results The morphological features of vascular invasion (P ＜ 0.05) and lymphadenectasis or necrosis (P ＜ 0.05),as well as the MR signal features on portal phase (P ＜ 0.05) and delayed phase (P ＜0.05) were different between the NET group and the NEC group;contrast to noise ratios (CNR) were also different between the two groups (x2 =5.14,P ＜ 0.05),CNR of the NEC group on both arterial phase (Z =121.75,P ＜ 0.05) and portal phase (Z =139.31,P ＜ 0.05) were significantly lower than the NET group;ROC analysis of CNR demonstrated an area under the curve of 0.729 (P ＜ 0.05) on portal phase,when the optimal cut-off value of-61.38 was used,a sensitivity of 90.0％ and a specificity of 63.2％ can be achieved.Conclusions MRI plays an important role in the hierarchical diagnosis of hepatic neuroendocrine neoplasms.The signs of vascular invasion,lymphadenectasis or necrosis as well as the MR signal features during dynamic enhanced scanning are of great value in differentiating NETs from NECs.