Can enhanced CT diagnose liver cancer? Not necessarily

Can enhanced CT scan confirm liver cancer? Enhanced CT scan can detect tumors less than one centimeter, but imaging examination can only show one thing, and it is unknown whether it is benign or malignant. Liver enhanced CT scan refers to an imaging technology that performs CT examination after intravenous injection of iodine-containing contrast agent (contrast agent), which increases the density difference between the diseased tissue and the adjacent normal tissue, thereby improving the display rate of the lesion.

The increase in the density of diseased tissue is called enhancement or enhancement. For example, if there is an abnormal mass in the body, if it has rich blood vessels, the blood content is relatively high, and the amount of contrast agent is relatively large, it is easy to distinguish it from the surrounding normal tissue during CT examination. The contrast and development effect are significantly improved compared with ordinary CT examination.
Although CT has a high density resolution, many lesions cannot be shown in CT plain scan images because there is no obvious density difference between the lesions and the surrounding normal tissues. CT plain scans cannot show the size and shape of lesions or tumors. Enhanced CT scans after intravenous injection of contrast agents are needed to artificially increase the density difference between lesions and normal organs, so that isodense lesions or small tumors that cannot be shown in CT plain scans can be clearly found. Dynamic enhanced scanning can also improve the ability to distinguish between benign and malignant tumor lesions based on the presence or degree of lesion enhancement, enhancement mode or type. Liver enhanced CT is a CT scan performed after contrast agent injection, which is generally performed in three phases, namely arterial phase, portal phase, and delayed phase. Since the liver has a dual blood supply, with blood from the portal vein and hepatic artery, the different imaging manifestations in different stages are conducive to identifying the source of the lesion. For example, liver cancer is generally significantly enhanced in the arterial phase and slightly enhanced in the portal phase, while hepatic hemangioma is slightly enhanced in the portal phase, and the enhancement becomes more and more obvious later.