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Published on: April 20, 2021
A pilot approach for quantitative assessment of liver fibrosis using ultrasound: preliminary results in 79 cases
Hiroyuki Yamada1, Masaaki Ebara, Tadashi Yamaguchi
1Medicine and Clinical Oncology, Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba University, 1-8-1 Inohana, Chuou-ku, Chiba 260-8670, Japan. yama11111@hotmail.com
Background/Aims:
Ultrasound is noninvasive and useful to evaluate liver disease despite its operator dependency. This pilot study was conducted to quantitatively assess liver fibrosis using ultrasound.
Methods:
Fibrosis extraction ratios (FER) (fiber volume/total volume) of ultrasound and histological images of 8 autopsy specimens were compared. We also compared FER of ultrasound images from clinical patients (n=79) with histological fibrosis stages.
Results:
In the autopsy study, FER correlation coefficient between histological images and ultrasound images was 0.992. Regarding clinical patients, there was sufficient evidence to indicate differences in the distributions of FER for each fibrosis stage (Kruskal-Wallis test P<0.0001). With FER cut-off to distinguish > or =F2 from F0 and F1 defined as mean plus standard deviation of F0 and F1, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and likelihood ratio were 62, 75, 78, 57%, and 2.47, respectively. Regarding HCV cohort (n=44), they were 55, 87, 89, 50%, and 4.14, respectively. Areas under receiver operating characteristic curves were 0.78, 0.79, 0.83 and 0.83 for > or =F1, > or =F2, > or =F3 and =F4, respectively. Regarding HCV cohort, they were 0.74, 0.71, 0.79 for > or =F2, > or =3 and =4, respectively.
Conclusions:
The FER method has great potential for diagnosing liver fibrosis using ultrasound.
