Fat fraction quantification with MRI estimates tumor proliferation of hepatocellular carcinoma

To assess the utility of fat fraction quantification using quantitative multi-echo Dixon for evaluating tumor proliferation and microvascular invasion (MVI) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

A total of 66 patients with resection and histopathologic confirmed HCC were enrolled. Preoperative MRI with proton density fat fraction and R₂* mapping was analyzed. Intratumoral and peritumoral regions were delineated with manually placed regions of interest at the maximum level of intratumoral fat. Correlation analysis explored the relationship between fat fraction and Ki67. The fat fraction and R₂* were compared between high Ki67(>30%) and low Ki67 nodules, and between MVI negative and positive groups. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used for further analysis if statistically different.

The median fat fraction of tumor (tFF) was higher than peritumor liver (5.24% vs 3.51%, P=0.012). The tFF was negatively correlated with Ki67 (r=-0.306, P=0.012), and tFF of high Ki67 nodules was lower than that of low Ki67 nodules (2.10% vs 4.90%, P=0.001). The tFF was a good estimator for low proliferation nodules (AUC 0.747, cut-off 3.39%, sensitivity 0.778, specificity 0.692). There was no significant difference in tFF and R2* between MVI positive and negative nodules (3.00% vs 2.90%, P=0.784; 55.80s-1 vs 49.15s-1, P=0.227).

We infer that intratumor fat can be identified in HCC and fat fraction quantification using quantitative multi-echo Dixon can distinguish low proliferative HCCs.