Moreover, CircPanel showed a higher accuracy than AFP in diagnosis of small-HCC (solitary, diameter ≤ 3 cm) (AUC of CircPanel vs. AFP: 0.862 vs. 0.680, p=0.001 in the training set; 0.838 vs. 0.699, p=0.011 in Validation Set 1 and 0.851 vs. 0.738, p=0.009 in Validation Set 2) (54). This evidence concerns the gene AFP and hepatocellular carcinoma.