A team led by presenter Dr. Francesca Castagnoli of the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam compared an abbreviated gadoxetate liver MRI protocol plus a contrast-enhanced CT exam to a standard gadoxetate liver MRI protocol among 75 patients with 245 liver metastases and 122 benign liver lesions. Acquisition time for the standard exam was 35 to 45 minutes, while the abbreviated acquisition time was less than 15 minutes.
Intraobserver agreement (measured as interclass correlation, or ICC) between the two protocols was 0.97 and interobserver agreement was 0.98 (with 1 as reference); there was also high agreement among readers for identifying benign lesions, at 0.96.
"The use of the abbreviated protocol can reduce imaging time without sacrificing diagnostic performance for the baseline study of the liver in colorectal cancer patient," Castagnoli's group concluded.
