Vibration-Guided Transient Elastography: A Novel Fibroscan® Examination with Improved Guidance for Liver Stiffness...

Vibration-controlled transient elastography-based FibroScan (Echosens, Paris, France) is today considered the reference device for non-invasive assessment of liver stiffness, and has been found to be a good surrogate marker of liver fibrosis. One major issue when using VCTE™ is the necessity to find an optimal measurement window before triggering measurements. In this article, a new method called vibration-guided transient elastography (VGTE) facilitating the localization of an optimal measurement window is proposed. VGTE relies on a combination of continuous and transient vibrations used to locate the liver and to measure liver stiffness, respectively. Two studies conducted on customized phantoms and on 31 volunteers compared VGTE with standard ultrasound-based tools. VGTE performed significantly better than standard ultrasound-based tools in detection of an optimal measurement window. The operator never failed to find a valid measurement window using VGTE. VGTE can also detect artifacts such as lungs, ribs and blood vessels.