Quantitative and Volumetric European Association for the Study of the Liver and Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors Measurements: Feasibility of a Semiautomated Software Method to Assess Tumor Response after Transcatheter Arterial Chemoembolization

PurposeTo show that hepatic tumor volume and enhancement pattern measurements can be obtained in a time-efficient and reproducible manner on a voxel-by-voxel basis to provide a true three-dimensional (3D) volumetric assessment.Materials and MethodsMagnetic resonance (MR) imaging data obtained from 20 patients recruited for a single-institution prospective study were retrospectively evaluated. All patients had a diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and underwent drug-eluting beads (DEB) transcatheter arterial chemoembolization for the first time. All patients had undergone contrast-enhanced MR imaging before and after DEB transcatheter arterial chemoembolization; poor image quality excluded 3 patients, resulting in a final count of 17 patients. Volumetric RECIST (vRECIST) and quantitative EASL (qEASL) were measured, and segmentation and processing times were recorded.ResultsThere were 34 scans analyzed. The time for semiautomatic segmentation was 65 seconds±33 (range, 40–200 seconds). vRECIST and qEASL of each tumor were computed<1 minute for each.ConclusionsSemiautomatic quantitative tumor enhancement (qEASL) and volume (vRECIST) assessment is feasible in a workflow-efficient time frame. Clinical correlation is necessary, but vRECIST and qEASL could become part of the assessment of intraarterial therapy for interventional radiologists.