Journal of hepatocellular carcinoma
Negative Correlation Between ADC Values and GPC3 Expression in Hepatocellular Carcinoma: A Quantitative Diffusion-Weighted Imaging Study
By Fu Z, Huang Y, Liu Y and 1 others.
Abstract
Objective
To investigate the association between apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) derived from diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and glypican-3 (GPC3) expression in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and to explore the potential of ADC as a non-invasive imaging biomarker for assessing GPC3 expression.
Methods
This retrospective study included 468 patients with pathologically confirmed HCC who underwent preoperative liver magnetic resonance imaging between January 2020 and December 2025. Based on immunohistochemical staining, patients were classified into three groups: GPC3-negative (GPC3-, n=69), low-expression (GPC3+, n=42), and high-expression (GPC3++, n=357). Tumor ADC values, adjacent liver tissue ADC values, and tumor-to-liver ADC ratios were measured and compared among groups. Statistical analyses included the Kruskal-Wallis test, Mann-Whitney U-test with Bonferroni correction, and Spearman correlation analysis.