Point shear wave elastography method for assessing liver stiffness

Abstract

PSWE is a reproducible method for assessing liver stiffness, and it compares with TE. Compared with patients with nonsignificant fibrosis, healthy volunteers showed significantly lower values.

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“…The interobserver reproducibility of the ElastPQ ® technique was assessed in 291 consecutive patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) who underwent partial hepatectomy or liver biopsy due to hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Very good reproducibility of this technique was achieved (ICC = 0.798) with a similar conclusion reached in a further study [70].…”

“…Similar results (ICC = 0.87) were obtained [103] in 20 healthy subjects. In a cohort of 69 healthy subjects, ElastPQ ® showed very good intra-(ICC = 0.96) and interobserver (ICC = 0.93) reproducibility [70].…”

“…Methods using pSWE have shown excellent interobserver agreement, with concordance ranging from 0.80 to 0.97 for measurements performed via an intercostal approach, and independent of operator experience, suggesting that operators require only a short period of training to perform reliable LSMs [66,70,103,106]. Using 2D-SWE (SSI) an expert operator had higher reproducibility of measurements over time than a novice operator [23].…”

Aim: To investigate the value of ElastPQ measurement for differential diagnosis of benign and malignant focal liver lesions (FLLs) by using histologic results as a reference standard. Material and methods: A total of 154 patients were included. ElastPQ measurement was performed for each lesion in which the shear wave speed (SWS) was measured. The difference in SWS and SWS ratio of FLL to surrounding liver were evaluated, and the cut off value was investigated. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve

“…PSWE improves the feasibility and accuracy of stiffness measurements, even in obese patients and patients with ascites [6]. It enjoys high levels of intraobserver and interobserver agreement [6]. PSWE has been reported to be useful in noninvasively diagnosis and characterization of different solid tumors, which have been found to be stiffer than the surrounding tissues: e.g., breast lesions [7], prostate cancer [8], thyroid cancer [9], lymph nodes [10] and pancreatic masses [11].…”

“…Point shear wave elastography (PSWE) as a part of the second generation of ultrasound SWE methods, includes acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI) and elastography point quantification (ElastPQ). PSWE improves the feasibility and accuracy of stiffness measurements, even in obese patients and patients with ascites [6]. It enjoys high levels of intraobserver and interobserver agreement [6].…”