Prospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 7, 2015; 21(17): 5345-5351
Published online May 7, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i17.5345
Assessment of radiofrequency ablation margin by MRI-MRI image fusion in hepatocellular carcinoma
Xiao-Li Wang, Kai Li, Zhong-Zhen Su, Ze-Ping Huang, Ping Wang, Rong-Qin Zheng
Xiao-Li Wang, Kai Li, Zhong-Zhen Su, Ze-Ping Huang, Ping Wang, Rong-Qin Zheng, Department of Ultrasound, the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510630, Guangdong Province, China
Author contributions: Wang XL and Li K contributed equally to this work; Wang XL, Li K, Su ZZ, Huang ZP, Wang P and Zheng RQ designed the study; Wang XL, Li K, Su ZZ, Huang ZP and Wang P performed the research and analyzed the data; Wang XL and Li K wrote the paper; and Zheng RQ supervised the study.
Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81271669, No. 81430038 and No. 81301931.
Ethics approval: The study was reviewed and approved by the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest: No conflict of interest.
Data sharing: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Rong-Qin Zheng, PhD, Department of Ultrasound, the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, No. 600 Tianhe Road, Guangzhou 510630, Guangdong Province, China. mysonoworld@163.com
Telephone: +86-20-85252416 Fax: +86-20-85252416
Received: October 26, 2014
Peer-review started: October 29, 2014
First decision: November 14, 2014
Revised: December 6, 2014
Accepted: February 11, 2015
Article in press: February 11, 2015
Published online: May 7, 2015
Core Tip

Core tip: One of the major factors that impact the therapeutic effectiveness of radiofrequency ablation (RFA) for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is local tumor progression (LTP), which is primarily attributed to insufficient ablative margins (AMs). Traditional image evaluation methods, including contrast-enhanced ultrasound and side-by-side comparison with computed tomography/magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images, cannot quantitatively determine the AM in three dimensions. Our study was the first to report the feasibility of MRI-MRI image fusion using a commercial ultrasound workstation to assess the RFA AM for HCC. The results demonstrated that this method specifically describes the direction of the insufficient ablative zone and would be helpful for the early detection of LTP.