A gadoxetic-acid enhancement flux analysis of small liver nodules (≤2 cm) in patients at high risk of hepatocellular carcinoma

•Apply a gadoxetic-acid enhancement flux analysis to quantitatively fit the time-intensity curves of small liver nodules (≤2 cm).•In the training and test sets, the AUCs of the proposed model based on the gadoxetic-acid enhancement flux analysis were 0.897 and 0.859, which were significantly higher than those of the other models.•The flux analysis for gadoxetic-acid enhanced MRI can effectively discriminate between non-HCCs and HCCs, which can help make clinical decisions.