Diagnostic significance of fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography/computed tomography in differentiating Edmondson grade II and III hepatocellular carcinoma

Table 1 Comparative analysis of metabolic parameters between Edmondson grade II and III hepatocellular carcinoma groups, maximum tumor diameter (interquartile range)

	Edmondson grade II (n = 17)	Edmondson grade III (n = 15)	Z	P value
SUVmax	6.43 (4.36-7.73)	13.79 (9.04-17.99)	3.399	0.001
SUVmean	3.24 (2.83-4.145)	6.24 (3.99-6.83)	3.040	0.002
MTV	31.23 (18.91-120.52)	94.7 (41.9-280.0)	1.945	0.052
TLG	107.3 (54.94-384.825)	590.5 (208.9-1828.0)	2.776	0.006
TNR	2.18 (1.405-2.605)	4.76 (2.58-5.62)	2.964	0.003
TBR	3.18 (2.015-4.18)	6.27 (2.93-8.64)	2.663	0.008
Maximum tumor diameter (cm)	5.4 (4.15-7.05)	6.9 (4.8-11.3)	1.984	0.047
Ki67 expression percentage (mean ± SD)	26.76% ± 13.22%	52.3% ± 20.5%	3.356	0.001

SUV_max: Maximum standardized uptake value; SUV_mean: Mean standardized uptake value; MTV: Metabolic tumor volume; TLG: Total lesion glycolysis; TNR: Tumor-to-normal background ratio; TBR: Tumor-to-blood pool ratio.

Table 2 Diagnostic performance of various parameters based on receiver operating characteristic curve analysis

	Cutoff	AUC (95%CI)	Sensitivity (%)	Specificity (%)	P value
SUVmax	10.95	0.853 (0.709-0.997)	66.7	100	0.001
SUVmean	4.32	0.816 (0.655-0.976)	73.3	88.2	0.002
TLG	248.1	0.788 (0.630-0.947)	71.5	76.5	0.006
TNR	2.53	0.808 (0.643-0.973)	80	76.5	0.003
TBR	4.46	0.776 (0.597-0.956)	70.2	82.4	0.008

SUV_max: Maximum standardized uptake value; SUV_mean: Mean standardized uptake value; TLG: Total lesion glycolysis; TNR: Tumor-to-normal background ratio; TBR: Tumor-to-blood pool ratio; AUC: Area under the curve; CI: Confidence interval.