Gadoxetic acid-enhanced MRI for the detection of liver metastases from melanoma

We aimed to assess imaging findings and detection sensitivity for melanoma liver metastases on gadoxetic acid-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

This retrospective study included patients with melanoma liver metastasis who underwent gadoxetic acid-enhanced MRI. Two abdominal radiologists independently evaluated signal characteristics of liver metastases on morphologic imaging (precontrast T1- and T2-weighted imaging), diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), dynamic imaging, and hepatobiliary phase (HBP). Imaging findings were compared according to detection on HBP and the primary site of the melanoma using logistic regression with the generalized estimating equation (GEE). Detection sensitivity for metastases was compared among different MR imaging sets using logistic regression with GEE.

A total of 67 patients with 254 liver metastases were included (44 women; mean age ± standard deviation, 65.6 ± 13.0 years). On HBP, 76.0% of metastases were detected, and 55.5% (141/254) showed hypointensity. Most of the metastases that were not detected on HBP originated from ocular melanomas (98.4%, 60/61), ≤1 cm (90.2%, 55/61) and showed T1 hyperintensity (98.4%, 60/61). Metastases from non-ocular melanomas more frequently showed T1 hypointensity, T2 hyperintensity, diffusion restriction, arterial enhancement, and HBP hypointensity than those from ocular melanomas (Ps ≤ 0.019). The detection sensitivity of HBP (76.0%) was significantly higher than DWI (65.7%, P = 0.006), but lower than morphologic imaging (98.8%, P < 0.001) and dynamic imaging (97.6%, P < 0.001).

The detection sensitivity of HBP for melanoma liver metastasis was 76.0%, which was lower than that of morphologic or dynamic imaging. HBP of gadoxetic acid-enhanced MRI has little advantage in detecting melanoma liver metastases.