YOON Jeong Hee

Jeong Hee YOON

Department of Radiology, Seoul National University Hospital, Korea

キーワード :

Chronic liver diseases are a major public health problem as they account for significant morbidity and mortality worldwide. Until now, liver biopsy has been widely accepted also as the gold standard method used to assess hepatic fibrosis （HF）. However, because of several well-known drawbacks of liver biopsy, stiffness imaging has been drawing attention as an alternative. It can be divided into two categories based on basic modalities: ultrasound （US） and magnetic resonance （MR）. US based stiffness imaging （elastography） includes transient elastography （TE）, Acoustic Radiation Force Imaging （ARFI） and Supersonic Shear wave Elastography （SWE）. TE is the most widely validated method among these three techniques, but it does not provide imaging information whereas other two can provide B-mode imaging. Furthermore, SWE provides elastogram which is color-coded from blue to red, which is able to be obtained on MR Elastography （MRE）. Using elastogram, the liver stiffness （LS） result can be delivered more intuitively and let the operators know the measurement is correctly processed.
Despite the advantages of SWE, only a few studies reported its diagnostic performance and reproducibility. And SWE is still not familiar with many radiologists and physicians yet. Currently, there are neither recommendations nor established standardization of the SWE performance. Therefore, here, we suggest how many times LS value has to be measured on SWE and which value should be taken based on a single-center, retrospective study. In addition, the frequency of technical failure and unreliable measurements on SWE will be shown on two single-center, retrospective studies. The factors which are associated with technical failure and unreliable measurement are investigated by two retrospective studies and in comparison with literature review. The diagnostic performance of SWE for HF and the cross-validation results, based on single-center study, are shown and compared with literatures.