The enhancement ratio of HCCs in the hepatobiliary phase of gadoxetic acid-enhanced MR imaging positively correlated with expression levels of OATP8 and MRP3, indicating that gadoxetic acid is taken up by OATP8 and excreted by MRP3.

The immunohistochemical expression of OATP8 significantly decreases during multistep hepatocarcinogenesis, which may explain the decrease in enhancement ratio on gadoxetic acid-enhanced MR imaging.

http://radiology.rsna.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1148/radiol.12120226/-/DC1.

HCCs with β-catenin mutation showed a higher grade of differentiation with frequent pseudoglandular patterns and bile production, and characteristic imaging findings included a high enhancement ratio at gadoxetic acid-enhanced MR imaging and a high apparent diffusion coefficient at diffusion-weighted imaging. Online supplemental material is available for this article.

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