INVENTION NOVELTY
The proposition of this invention is to provide quantitative assessment of enhancement to the entire tumor volume in Hepatocellular carcinoma cases. This process will remove the subjectivity of treatment response assessment and allow for a more direct comparison of pre- and post-TACE treatment response. Various methods to measure contrast uptake and perfusion of the tumor region in relation to the non-tumorous tissue are conceivable and are outlined in the detailed description. Although these technologies exist separately, until now, there has been no quantitative, volume based assessment of liver tumors
VALUE PROPOSITION
The current EASL tumor evaluation criteria have numerous shortcomings. It is based on a qualitative assessment on a single axial post contrast slice. In addition, assessment is grouped into quartiles; if a tumor determined to be close to one of the quartiles, assessment is extremely subjective. The invention proposed, i.e. quantitative evaluation of tumor enhancement over the entire volume, will eliminate the aforementioned shortcomings.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
The envisaged quantitative assessment of tumor response based on treatment success will be based on the post-intervention / post-TACE treatment enhancement on multiphasic contrast enhanced MRI of the liver. The post contrast enhanced MRI scans will be analyzed. Adequate algorithms for performing automatic or semi-automatic tumor segmentation are applied in order to define the tumor volume.
The observed voxel-enhancement within the tumor – which is due to the contrast agent injected during the MRI study – is then quantitatively assessed and compared to the respective non-tumor tissue. This can yield a measure of tumor response. Most of the conceivable embodiments of this invention differ mainly in the type of measure derived.
