The clinical study on hepatic vessels with 64-slice spiral computed tomographic angiography

Objective To evaluate the capability of 64-slice spiral CT in displaying hepatic vessels, its clinical value and compare the difference between different postprocessing technique in liver multi-phase angiography. Methods Two hundreds and nine patients who underwent multiphase enhanced liver scan involved in this study. Maximum intensity projection (MIP), volume rendering (VR) and multiple planar reformation (MPR) were used to reconstruct liver vessel three-dimensionally in arterial phase and portal-vein phase. The demonstration of hepaticartery, portal vein, hepatic vein and vascular changes in hepatic tumor were analyzed and compared with each other.Thirty cases were performed hepatic arterial DSA at the same time and used as reference. Results The variant rate in this group was up to 32%. No significant difference was found between VR and MIP in displaying hepatic artery branches under grade 2 and tumor feeding artery, however, MIP is better than VR in demonstrating hepatic artery branches smaller than grade 3 and tumor vascular changes with great significance (P0.05). Of the 30 patients with hepatic tumor underwent DSA examination at the same time, MSCTA had the same ability as DSA in displaying feeding artery and no significant difference was found in displaying hepatic artery under grade 3, but DSA is better than MSCTA in displaying hepatic artery smaller than grade 4 with great significance (P0.05). No significant difference was found between VR and MIP. Portal vein had five sorts of variant. variant rate was 27.8%. There are two types of hepatic vein in 84 cases enrolled in this study, among which type I accounted for 95% (80 cases) and type II 5% (4 cases), and right posterior segment of hepatic vein can be displayed in 7 cases, exhibition rate were 8.3%. Conclusion 64-slice spiral CTA can display hepatic vessels and vascular changes more accurately and especially in the demonstration of tiny hepatic vessel. This technique can provide accurate information before surgery and intervention. A combination of different postprocessing techniques such as VR, MIP and MPR could as good as DSA.