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Updated: Apr 20, 2026
Measurement of Liver Stiffness Using Atomic Force Microscopy Coupled with Polarization Microscopy
Published on: July 20, 2022
Evaluation of Liver Stiffness After Radioembolization by Real-Time ShearWave™ Elastography: Preliminary Study
Ahmet Bas1, Cesur Samanci, Fatih Gulsen
1Department of Interventional Radiology, Cerrahpasa Faculty of Medicine, Istanbul University, KMPasa, Fatih, Istanbul, 34098, Turkey, dr.ahmetbas@hotmail.com.
Purpose:
To evaluate the effect of ShearWave(™) elastography (SWE) for the assessment of liver fibrosis after radioembolization (RE) in patients with liver malignancies.
Materials And Methods:
We prospectively examined the effects of SWE before and after RE in 17 adult patients, from June 2012 to September 2013. All patients underwent SWE within 1 month before and 3 months (96.3 ± 22.9 days) after RE. Measurements were taken in segments III, IV, V, and VI (lateral/medial left lobe and anterior/posterior right lobe, respectively). Liver stiffness was studied in the 39 treated segments.
Results:
The mean stiffness of liver tissue according to the pre-RE SWE measurements was not different from the post-RE SWE measurements in the segments that did not undergo RE. Conversely, segments treated with RE were significantly stiffer according to the post-RE SWE measurements (mean SWE 17.4 kPa) than according to the baseline measurements (7.0 kPa) (p < 0.001). Patients with hepatocellular carcinoma and preexisting infection with hepatitis B and C viruses had higher pre-embolization stiffness, and the post-embolization stiffness of the treated segments in these patients was higher than that in the remainder of the study population.
Conclusion:
These data suggest that SWE measurements of liver stiffness increase as early as the third month after RE. SWE could be used as a noninvasive complementary imaging method for preliminary assessment of liver fibrosis before and after RE.
