Prospective evaluation of liver shearwave elastography measurements with 3 different technologies and same day liver biopsy in patients with chronic liver disease

Abstract

Background: Most ultrasound-based methods for assessing liver fibrosis still need further validation with liver biopsy used as gold standard to assess their accuracy.

Aims: To assess accuracy of three shear wave elastography (SWE) methods: 1) Philips Elast Point Quantification (ElastPQ^TM), 2) Siemens Virtual Touch^TM Quantification (VTQ) acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI), and 3) transient elastography (TE) measured by Echosens Fibroscan^TM.

Methods: 160 patients underwent liver stiffness measurements (LSM) with three SWE methods immediately prior to liver biopsy.

Results: The number of LSM required for reliable studies could be reduced to 6 for ElastPQ and to 7 for VTQ from standard recommendations of 10. Significant fibrosis and interquartile range/median (IQR/M)> 30 were independent predictors for lower reliability for detection of liver fibrosis. Ordinal logistic regression corrected for age showed that there was a significant interaction between steatosis (p = 0.008) and lobular inflammation (p = 0.04) and VTQ (ARFI) and between lobular inflammation and TE (p = 0.006).

Conclusions: We showed variations in SWE measurements using different ARFI technologies. TE and ElastPQ achieved good diagnostic performance, whereas VTQ showed lower diagnostic accuracy. The number of measurements required for reliable studies can be reduced to 6 for ElastPQ and to 7 for VTQ, which have important clinical implications.

Keywords: Fibroscan; Liver biopsy; Liver fibrosis; Liver stiffness measurements; Shear wave elastography.