Quantitative study of normal value in health liver by real-time shear wave elastography

Abstract

Objective To explore the feasibility of detecting liver stiffness by real-time shear wave elastography (SWE) and establish a reference range of shear modulus in healthy liver of adults.Methods 335 adults underwent SWE detection to obtain the shear modulus of livers.The effects of different gender and age on the shear modulus in normal adult were analyzed.Thirty subjects were performed by two operators respectively to evaluate interobserver agreement.Results 329 health volunteers were detected successfully.The success rate was 98.2 ％.The mean value of SWE measurements in normal individuals was (5.023 ± 0.966)kPa.The liver shear modulus of healthy adults had a 95％ confidence interval from 4.918-5.128 kPa.There were no significant differences between the mean SWE values in men vs women (P =0.218),also among different age groups (P =0.271).No statistically significant was observed between the mean SWE values obtained by two different operators (P =0.498),interobserver ICC value was 0925.Conclusions SWE is a repeatability and stability method to access liver stiffness on healthy subjects.In our study the mean liver stiffness value obtained by SWE in healthy subjects was 5.023 kPa.The mean liver stiffness value obtained by SWE did not influenced by sex and age. Key words: Ultrasonography; Liver; Shear wave elastography