A clinical scoring model based on Gd-EOB-DTPA enhanced MRI predicting microvascular invasion in hepatocellular carcinoma: a multicenter study / 中华放射学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To establish a clinical diagnostic scoring model for preoperative predicting hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) microvascular invasion (MVI) based on gadolinium-ethoxybenzyl-diethylenetriamine pentacetic acid (Gd-EOB-DTPA) enhanced MRI, and verify its effectiveness.Methods:From January 2014 to December 2020, a total of 251 cases with pathologically confirmed HCC from Tianjin First Central Hospital and Jilin University First Hospital were retrospectively collected to serve as the training set, while 57 HCC patients from Tianjin Medical University Cancer Hospital were recruited as an independent external validation set. The HCC patients were divided into MVI positive and MVI negative groups according to the pathological results. The tumor maximum diameters and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values were measured. On the Gd-EOB-DTPA MRI images, tumor morphology, peritumoral enhancement, peritumoral low intensity (PTLI), capsule, intratumoral artery, intratumoral fat, intratumoral hemorrhage, and intratumoral necrosis were observed. Univariate analysis was performed using the χ 2 test or the independent sample t-test. The independent risk factors associated with MVI were obtained in the training set using a multivariate logistic analysis. Points were assigned to each factor according to the weight value to establish a preoperative score model for predicting MVI. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to determine the score threshold and to verify the efficacy of this scoring model in predicting MVI in the independent external validation set. Results:The training set obtained 98 patients in the MVI positive group and 153 patients in the MVI negative group, while the external validation set obtained 16 patients in the MVI positive group and 41 patients in the MVI negative group. According to logistic analysis, tumor maximum diameter>3.66 cm (OR 3.654, 95%CI 1.902-7.018), hepatobiliary PTLI (OR 9.235, 95%CI 4.833-16.896) and incomplete capsule (OR 6.266, 95%CI 1.993-9.345) were independent risk factors for MVI in HCC, which were assigned scores of 3, 4 and 2, respectively. The total score ranged from 0 to 9. In the external validation set, ROC curve analysis showed that the area under the curve of the scoring model was 0.918 (95%CI 0.815-0.974, P=0.001). When the score>4 was used as the threshold, the accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of the model in predicting MVI were 84.2%, 81.3%, and 85.4%, respectively. Conclusions:A scoring model based on Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRI provided a convenient and reliable way to predict MVI preoperatively.