Imaging evaluation of transcatheter arterial chemoembolization in treating hepatocellular carcinomas

Primary hepatic carcinoma is one of the serious diseases that threaten human beings' health and life. Transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) has become a non-surgical treatment now widely and commonly used in the clinical practice. Correctly assessing the therapeutic efficacy of TACE for primary hepatic carcinoma is clinically very important as the judgment is directly related to the reasonable selection of therapeutic scheme as well as to the precise expectation of the prognosis. Nowadays, there are many different imaging methods to make assessment of the therapeutic response of TACE for primary hepatic carcinoma. This article mainly describes the applications of different imaging methods, focusing on CT perfusion, contrast-enhanced ultrasonography and MRI, in clinical evaluation of the therapeutic efficacy of TACE for the primary hepatic carcinoma, and the current situation of this technique will also be briefly discussed. (authors)