Detection of focal hepatic masses: STIR MR vs. CT during arterial portography.
OBJECTIVE
Our goal was to compare short tau inversion recovery MRI (STIR) to CT during arterial portography (CTAP) in the detection of hepatic lesions.


METHODS
Over a 24 month period, 40 patients evaluated for possible hepatic resection underwent T1, T2, and STIR MRI and CTAP. These studies were randomly ordered and interpreted by two independent readers. The total number of lesions and number of lesions within each hepatic segment were analyzed using McNemar's test.


RESULTS
Readers 1 and 2 detected 95 and 91 lesions by CTAP and 78 and 83 by STIR, respectively, which was not significantly different (p = 0.1, reader 1; p = 0.4, reader 2). For both readers CTAP and STIR MRI detected more lesions than either T2 or T1 MRI (p < 0.01). In the medial segment, readers 1 and 2 detected 18 and 17 lesions by CTAP and 7 and 9 by STIR, respectively (p = 0.01, reader 1; p = 0.035, reader 2).


CONCLUSIONS
Short tau inversion recovery MRI and CTAP are similar in total lesion detection except in the medial segment where lesions were more frequently identified by CTAP than STIR MRI.
Department of Radiology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina 27710.
E K
EK
Paulson
M E
ME
Baker
S S
SS
Paine
C E
CE
Spritzer
W C
WC
Meyers
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011172:Portography; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed