Comparison between the performance of Two-Dimensional and Point Shear Wave elastography for the noninvasive assessment of liver cirrhosis

Abstract

Background and aim The goals of this study were to compare the noninvasive diagnostic performance of two elastography techniques for the diagnosis of liver cirrhosis in a cohort of patients with known hepatitis C virus using Transient Elastography FibroScan as the method of reference since it is a validated tool for the non-invasive assessment of liver fibrosis. Material and Methods The study included 122 patients aged 38-80 (62 ± 7.9), 35% male (43/122), 65% female (79/122) with known hepatitis C virus in whom liver stiffness was evaluated during the same session by means of three elastography Methods: Point Shear Wave Elastography (pSWE) using virtual touch quantification(VTQ) technology Siemens Acuson S2000TM, Two-Dimensional Shear Wave Elastography (2D-SWE) embedded in General Electrics LOGIQ E9 ultrasound machine and Transient Elastography(TE;FibroScan, EchoSens). Reliable LS measurements were defined, for all techniques, as the median value of 10 measurements with an interquartile range/median(IQR/MED) Results Reliable liver stiffness measurements were obtained in 93% (114/122) of cases by means of TE, 88% (107/122) of cases by means of VTQ and 87% (106/122) of cases by means of 2D-SWE.GE. In the final analysis we included 93 patients which had reliable stiffness measurements with all methods.The AUROCS were calculated considering TE as the reference method. The optimal cutoff of VTQ for cirrhosis was 1.77m/s(SE:83%; SP:88%; AUC:0.89) and for 2D-SWE.GE was 10.2 kPa(SE:86%; SP:77%; AUC:0.89). No statistical differences were found between both methods(p Conclusion Both methods have similar performance for diagnosing liver cirrhosis and seem to be a promising alternative to Transient Elastography in evaluating patients with liver fibrosis.