Ultrasound Shear Wave Attenuation Imaging for Grading Liver Steatosis in Volunteers and Patients With Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: A Pilot Study.

The aims of the work described here were to assess shear wave attenuation (SWA) in volunteers and patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and compare its diagnostic performance with that of shear wave dispersion (SWD), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) proton density fat fraction (PDFF) and biopsy. Forty-nine participants (13 volunteers and 36 NAFLD patients) were enrolled. Ultrasound and MRI examinations were performed in all participants. Biopsy was also performed in patients. SWA was used to assess histopathology grades as potential confounders. The areas under curves (AUCs) of SWA, SWD and MRI-PDFF were assessed in different steatosis grades by biopsy. Youden's thresholds of SWA were obtained for steatosis grading while using biopsy or MRI-PDFF as the reference standard. Spearman's correlations of SWA with histopathology (steatosis, inflammation, ballooning and fibrosis) were 0.89, 0.73, 0.62 and 0.31, respectively. Multiple linear regressions of SWA confirmed the correlation with steatosis grades (adjusted R In this pilot study, SWA increased with increasing steatosis grades, and its diagnostic performance was higher than that of SWD but equivalent to that of MRI-PDFF.

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Copyright © 2023 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Conflict of interest G.S. has acted as speaker for Pfizer, Merck, Novo Nordisk, Novartis, Gilead and AbbVie; has served as an advisory board member for Merck, Gilead, Pfizer, Allergan, Novo Nordisk, Intercept and Novartis; and has received unrestricted research funding from Thera technologies Inc. A.T. and G.C. have received equipment loans and funding from Siemens Healthcare.