الفهرس 
Radiological Anatomy of the LiverOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common type of liver cancer. Transarterial chemo-embolization (TACE) is a common treatment for HCC. However, HCC often recurs after treatment, so it is important to follow up with patients after TACE to detect any new or residual tumors.
Our study aimed to assess the value of combining PET/CT and MRI as a routine follow-up of HCC patients after TACE and not a comparative study between the two modalities. In line with established practices and recommendations from various expert groups, we employed serial AFP measurement as the gold standard for evaluating treatment response in HCC.
Forty patients included in this study (30 males and 10 females) who had a history of TACE for HCC.
We divided the included forty patients by combining imaging results of the main PET/CT and the complementary MRI into four main groups using the serial AFP measurement as the diagnostic standard of reference. The true positive (true tumoral uptake) and negative groups (true tumoral ablation) represented 70% of the included patients (14 patients for each group) that showed the same results in both PET/CT and MRI. On the other hand, the false positive group included the patients who had positive PET/CT and negative MRI findings which may be due to false or abnormal physiological uptake (infection or hyperemia) found in 3 patients However, one of these three patients exhibited elevated AFP levels upon follow-up, indicating the presence of active tumor tissue. Whereas, the false negative group included patients with negative PET/CT (false photopenic appearance of tumors with low glucose metabolism) and positive MRI findings which may be explained by the previously mentioned PET/CT pitfall in which the well and moderately differentiated HCCs didn’t retain much glucose and so appeared in PET/CT as the normal hepatocytes were found in 9 patients.
Conclusion:
Consequently, we found that the combination of PET/CT and complementary MRI did not have any added value in the follow-up of HCC after TACE.