| Background and aim:The close correlation of angiogenesis and the generation, progression, invasion and metastasis of malignant tumour has been identified. It will promote the understanding for the biological behaviors which will improve the diagnosis and therapy to visualize the angiogenesis in tumour. The usually methods, for example microvessel count which is invasive and complicated, are mostly implemented in specimen. More unfortunately these techniques are not able to display the functional characteristics of the angiogenesis; therefore their clinically practical utilization is limited. With the development of imaging techniques, magnetic resonance (MR) with some functional imaging methods which can reflect the blood flow perfusion, water molecular diffusion, vessel microarchitecture and the cell metabolism has been used to evaluate the angiogenesis in vivo. As a potential tool for assessment of microvessel, functional MR imaging also may boost the clinical development of anti-angiogenesis therapy. Blood supply in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is abundant; however the heterogeneities of distribution, architechture and function of vessel result in the alteration of MR features. To probe the characteristics of tumour vessel will help to identify the molecularbiological mechanism of MR features. The purpose of the study is to investigate the correlation between anatomic and functional characteristics of vessel in HCC and the features of functional MRI, as well as the significance of functional MR for assessing the angiogenesis.Materials and methodsFrom January 2005 to November 2005, a prospective study was performed in 31 patients of HCC (20 males, 11 females; range 36-72 yr, mean age, 54.8 yr). Four functional imaging methods including the dynamic contrast-enhanced MR scanning (DCE-MR), diffusion weighted imaging; susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) and 31P-MRS were carried out in all patients before operation. The patterns of signal intensity-time curve,...
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