ObjectiveTo systematically review the diagnostic efficacy of abbreviated magnetic resonance imaging sequence (AMRI) screening for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). MethodsPubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library, Web of Science, CNKI, WanFang Data and VIP databases were electronically searched to collect studies on the diagnostic efficacy of AMRI screening for HCC from inception to March 2022. Two reviewers independently screened the literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of the included studies; then, meta-analysis was performed by using Stata 16.0 software. ResultsA total of 15 studies involving 2 823 participants were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that combined sensitivity and specificity of AMRI for HCC were 0.85 (95%CI 0.83 to 0.87) and 0.93 (95%CI 0.90 to 0.94). Subgroup analysis showed that, the combined sensitivity and specificity of NC AMRI and HBP AMRI were 0.84 (95%CI 0.81 to 0.87), 0.92 (95%CI 0.88 to 0.95) and 0.88 (95%CI 0.84 to 0.91), 0.93 (95%CI 0.91 to 0.94), respectively. The combined sensitivity and specificity of T2+DWI+HBP in HBP AMRI had the highest diagnostic efficacy. ConclusionCurrent evidence shows that all AMRI protocols have acceptable sensitivity and specificity for HCC screening. Among them, T2+DWI+HBP protocol shows the highest diagnostic efficiency. Due to the limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high-quality studies are needed to verify the above conclusion.