Abstract: Objective To investigate the value of T2WI texture parameters of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) for the diagnosis of microvascular invasion (MVI) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).Methods Eighty-two patients with pathologically confirmed HCC were included. They were divided into MVI group and non-MVI group according to whether they had MVI in HCC tissues or not. All patients were scanned with MRI and the T2WI image texture parameters including inertia, contrast, correlation, entropy, and deficit moment were obtained. The image texture parameters of the two groups were then compared. The receiver operating characteristic curves (ROC) were drawn for analyzing the predictive value of each parameter for MVI. The area under the curve (AUC), the best boundary value, sensitivity and specificity were also determined.Results Among 82 patients with HCC, 30 (36.59%) had MVI and 52 (63.41%) hadn't. The inertia and entropy of MVI group were significantly lower than those of the non-MVI group, whereas the contrast and deficit moment were significantly higher than those of the non-MVI group (P<0.05). The AUC of inertia, contrast, entropy, and deficit moment for MVI was 0.779, 0.827, 0.663 and 0.720, respectively, and 0.876 by a combination of these four parameters. When inertia was ≤ 170.080, contrast > 0.492, entropy ≤ 7.070, and deficit moment > 0.142, the patients had a higher MVI risk.Conclusion MRI T2WI can determine the changes of inertia, contrast, entropy and deficit moment in HCC patients with MVI, and has a high value in the judgment of MVI, especially when evaluated with a four- combination.

Key words: Hepatocellular carcinoma, Microvascular invasion, Texture parameter, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, T2WI