The effect of shear wave elastography in the diagnosis of delaminated partial-thickness rotator cuff tears.

Abstract

To assess the effectiveness of shear wave elastography (SWE) in diagnosing delaminated partial-thickness rotatorcuff tears (DPT-RCT). A retrospective study was carried out on 137 patients with DPT-RCT. Thestudy included complete clinical data, including the images of conventional ultrasound (US), SWE, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and shoulder arthroscopic surgery. The features of US, SWE, and MRI were evaluated. The study analysed theShear-Wave Velocity (SWV) among three types of DPT-RCT, and between the regions of tears, normal contralateral, and affected unilateral supraspinatus tendon. Furthermore, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were evaluated. The SWE detection rate was significantly higher (91.2%) compared to US (73.7%) and MRI (87.6%) for the overall diagnosisof DPT-RCT. Similarly, SWE yielded higher rates of detection for types 1 (89.5%) and 2 (92.3%) of DPT-RCT as comparedto US (71.7%, 69.2%) and MRI (81.6%, 94.9%), respectively. However, there was no significant difference in the accuracy ofdiagnosing type 3 among the three methods. The SWV of the 137 supraspinatus tendon tears was 3.64±0.60 m/s, which was higher than that of the normal supraspinatus tendon (2.43±0.47 m/s, p<0.01) as well as the region of tears (1.61±0.54 m/s, p<0.01). Nevertheless, there was no significant difference in SWV among the three types of DPT-RCT. The cutoff thresholds ofSWV for identifying normal tendon from DPT-RCT and for identifying DPT-RCT from the region of tears were 2.96m/s and2.39m/s, respectively. SWE with SWV can provide both quantitative and qualitative diagnostic information for DPT-RCT, which can be used as a crucial supplement imaging method.