Intra-System Reliability Assessment of 2-Dimensional Shear Wave Elastography

Christopher Edwards,Vicki Clifton,Erika Cavanagh,Sailesh Kumar,Davide Fontanarosa

doi:10.3390/app11072992

Christopher Edwards, Vicki Clifton + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/app11072992

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Abstract

The availability of 2-Dimensional Shear Wave Elastography (2D-SWE) technology on modern medical ultrasound systems is becoming increasingly common. The technology is now being used to investigate a range of soft tissues and related pathological conditions. This work investigated the reliability of a single commercial 2D-SWE system using a tissue-mimicking elastography phantom to understand the major causes of intra-system variability. Sources of shear wave velocity (SWV) measurement variability relates to imaging depth, target stiffness, sampling technique and the operator. Higher SWV measurement variability was evident with increasing depth and stiffness of the phantom targets. The influence of the operator was minimal, and variations in sampling technique had little impact on the SWV.

Highlights

Ultrasound based elastography techniques can be applied to investigate a range of clinical scenarios, with several different technologies currently available on various commercial ultrasound systems
Inter-system variability is a known issue in ultrasound elastography research and may preclude the meaningful comparison of measurements performed on different systems, even when the same phantom [9,18] or patient [19,39] is imaged
It is important to recognise that this study aimed to investigate which factors contribute most to intra-system variability

Summary

Introduction

Ultrasound based elastography techniques can be applied to investigate a range of clinical scenarios, with several different technologies currently available on various commercial ultrasound systems. One technique [2-Dimensional Shear Wave Elastography (2D-SWE)], generates these shear waves by applying multiple transducer-generated acoustic force pulses to create a two-dimensional parametric colour map of tissue stiffness. The operator is able to “sample” areas within this colour map using proprietary software to obtain quantitative measurements of tissue elasticity by measuring the shear wave velocity (SWV). By measuring the velocity of these lateral shear waves and comparing measurements from normal and pathological tissue, researchers can detect or monitor disease progression [3,4,5,6,7,8]

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