原发性肝癌发病率和死亡率均较高，其术后转移与复发已经成为影响患者预后的重要因素，临床上迫切需要能够有效预测和防治肝癌转移的检测手段。循环肿瘤细胞（ circulating tumor cell, CTC），作为近些年来新出现的肿瘤检测指标，因其能够实时、无创地监测肿瘤患者的病情状态，在早期诊断、早期治疗，判断预后和制定个体化治疗方案等方面具有重要意义而备受关注。CTC在乳腺癌、前列腺癌、结直肠癌、肺癌等疾病的应用已初步得到临床认可。最新的研究表明，肝癌患者病情状态与血液中CTC的数量也显示出极强的相关性。目前各种CTC检测体系主要包括富集纯化和鉴定两方面；但由于检测方法繁多，不同方法的敏感性、特异性不同限制了其临床应用。近年来，新的CTC检测方法层见叠出,涌现出了很多新技术用于肝癌CTC的临床研究。本文就其相关研究进展做一综述。

The incidence and mortality rate of the primary liver cancer are very high, and its postoperative metastasis and recurrence have become important factors that affect the prognosis of patients. Clinically, the detection methods to effectively predict and prevent of the liver cancer metastasis are in urgent need. Due to their advantage of real-time and noninvasive monitoring, circulating tumor cells (CTC), as a new tumor marker, play an important role in the early diagnosis, early treatment and individualized treatment, which induce the interest of the researchers. It has been recognized in clinical due to the successful applications in breast cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer and other diseases. The latest research shows that the state of a liver cancer patient and the number of CTCs in blood are closely related. However, the diverse detection methods and their sensitivity, specificity limit their clinical applications. At present, the popular detection system mainly contains two aspects: the enrichment and identification. In recent years, new CTC detection methods appear and are used in clinical research. This article will review the related research.