Abstract：Objective: To investigate the value of susceptibility weighted imaging in the discovery and diagnosis of focal liver lesions. Methods: Eighteen patients with 25 focal liver lesions were collected, all of them were proved by clinic and imaging. It included liver vascular malformation(n=1), hepatocellular carcinoma(n=4), cholangiocellular carcinoma(n=3), metastatic tumor in liver(n=2), liver haemangioma(n=5), and liver cyst(n=3). MR imaging were performed with conventional T1WI, T2WI, SWI and dynamic Gd-DTPA contrast enhanced MRI. The SWI imagings were compared to conventional sequence imagings. 3D MRA were performed in liver vascular malformation(n=1) and post-gadolinium enhanced SWI performed in one liver haemangioma. Results: In liver vascular malformation(n=1), SWI was better than conventional MRI and 3D MRA in discovering abnormal veins. SWI could discover tumor vascular structure and degradation products of blood in hepatocellular carcinoma(n=4), cholangiocellular carcinoma(n=3) and metastatic tumor in liver(n=2). SWI showed homogeneous slight hyper-signal in liver haemangioma(n=5) and liver cyst(n=3), and in comparatively large lesion of which the adjacent vein was compressed. Conclusion: SWI surpassed conventional MRI sequences in discovering liver venous vascular malformation and vascular structure in tumor. SWI is very helpful in differential diagnosis of focal liver lesions. It is a new approach to investigate the internal structures of focal liver lesions.
2011, Vol. 22 
