Fig 1.
Study flow (A) and study design (B).
Table 1.
Patient characteristics before local ablative therapy, stratified for occurrence of Non-TL.
Fig 2.
Example magnetic resonance imaging before and after local ablative therapy.
A) MRI of an HCC before treatment of a responding patient. HCC shows contrast enhancement in T1 sequence (arrow). B) Angiography image taken during TACE. HCC lesion is pooling arterial flow (arrow). C) Follow-up MRI of the responder patient. The lesion only shows ablation lesion after RFA/TACE without contrast enhancement. D) MRI of an HCC before treatment of a non-responding patient. HCC shows contrast enhancement in T1 sequence (arrow). E) Angiography image taken during TACE. HCC lesion is pooling arterial flow (arrow). F) Follow-up MRI of the responder patient. The contrast-enhancing lesion shows increase in size (arrow).
Table 2.
Patient characteristics before local ablative therapy, stratified for local response.
Fig 3.
Dynamics of HCC and liver stiffness.
A) Dynamic in changes in median stiffness of the liver at different time points before and after local ablative therapy stratified for local response. B) Dynamic in changes in median stiffness of the liver at different time points before and after local ablative therapy stratified for occurrence of Non-TL. C) Dynamic in changes in median stiffness of HCC at different time points before and after local ablative therapy stratified for local response. D) Dynamic in changes in median stiffness of the HCC at different time points before and after local ablative therapy stratified for occurrence of Non-TL. E) Receiver Operating Analysis for stiffness of HCC before treatment with occurrence of Non-TL as end point. Arrow shows optimal cut-off value of 17.5 kPa. F) Time-To-Event analysis with occurrence of Non-TL as endpoint stratified for HCC stiffness before treatment below and above 17.5 kPa. Abbreviations: Non-TL (non-target lesion), RT 2D-SWE (real-time two-dimensional shear wave elastography), HCC (hepatocellular carcinoma), ROC (receiver operating characteristics), kPa (kilopascals), area under the curve (AUC), 95% confidence interval (95%-CI). ns not significant, * p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001.
Table 3.
Patient characteristics before local ablative therapy, stratified for RECIST response.
Fig 4.
Dynamics of HCC and liver stiffness and examples.
A) Dynamic in changes in median stiffness of the liver at different time points before and after local ablative therapy stratified for local response. B) Dynamic in changes in median stiffness of the liver at different time points before and after local ablative therapy stratified for occurrence of Non-TL. Example of an HCC nodule with low C) and high D) stiffness after local ablative therapy.