Comparative study between ultrasound, computed tomography, intra-arterial digital subtraction angiography, and magnetic resonance imaging in the differentiation of tumors of the liver.

Forty-one patients with liver tumor have been evaluated with ultrasound (US), computed tomography (CT), intra-arterial digital subtraction angiography (IA-DSA), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in order to establish the accuracy of each technique. In group A (24 patients), in which all four imaging modalities were performed, our results show that MRI detected all hemangiomas (25/25) compared to 22/25, 21/25, and 20/25 with US, CT, and IA-DSA, respectively. No difference between the various methods was seen in the case of hepatoma. Finally, in the patients with metastases, all four techniques had the same sensitivity (100%) but the specificity of MRI was also 100%, compared to 33% for IA-DSA and 66% for US and CT.