Magnetic resonance imaging of liver tumors

Careful optimization of scanning techniques, particularly motion artifact suppression, has been essential to achieve reproducible results in abdominal MRI. The investigators experience indicates that MRI can be more accurate than other imaging methods for the detection of focal liver lesions. Furthermore, MRI is able to solve the major clinical problems in differential diagnosis of benign and malignant liver lesions: cancer v cavernous hemangioma or focal fat. MRI has reduced the dependence on liver biopsy and angiography to diagnose and stage focal liver lesions. Unfortunately, both imaging techniques, especially motion artifact suppression methods, vary widely among machines operating at different field strengths. Therefore, as hardware and software evolve, it is necessary to retrace the steps of pulse sequence optimization and clinical testing. Hopefully, in the future, standardized imaging techniques will become available for body MRI.