Clinical Usefulness of Ultrasound Elastography in Colonic Diseases: A Narrative Review

Ultrasound elastography is an innovation of ultrasound technology that has developed since the 1990s. It has been successfully applied for many organs, such as the thyroid, breast, liver, prostate, and muscle systems, providing qualitative and quantitative information about tissue stiffness for clinical diagnoses. For colorectal tumors, ultrasound elastography can distinguish colon adenoma from colon adenocarcinoma and predict the chemotherapeutic effects of colon cancer by monitoring the stiffness changes of cancer tissue. In Crohn’s disease, ultrasound elastography helps assess the stages of the course and guides further treatment strategies. Compared with colonoscopy, ultrasound elastography frees patients from the fears of uncomfortable procedures and enables operators to comprehensively observe the bowel wall and the surrounding structures. In this review, we introduced the principles and the pathological bases of ultrasound elastography and compared the diagnostic efficacies of colonoscopy with colonic ultrasound elastography. Meanwhile, we summarized the ultrasonography of colonic diseases and reviewed the clinical usefulness of ultrasound elastography in colonic diseases.