Velacur ACE outperforms FibroScan CAP for diagnosis of MASLD.

Area of Science:

• Hepatology
• Medical Imaging
• Non-invasive Diagnostics

Background:

• Increasing prevalence of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) necessitates reliable non-invasive diagnostic tools.
• Liver biopsy poses risks; ultrasound-based methods offer alternatives for assessing liver health.
• Velacur provides point-of-care ultrasound assessment of liver stiffness and attenuation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the efficacy of Velacur and FibroScan in assessing liver stiffness and fat content.
• To evaluate these non-invasive methods against MRI-based measurements as a reference standard.
• To determine the diagnostic performance for advanced fibrosis and liver fat in MASLD patients.

Main Methods:

• Prospective cross-sectional study of 164 adult MASLD participants.
• Utilized Velacur, FibroScan, magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), and MRI proton density fat fraction (MRI-PDFF).
• Primary outcomes: advanced fibrosis (>F2) by MRE and liver fat (>5%) by MRI-PDFF.

Main Results:

• Velacur and FibroScan showed similar performance in detecting advanced fibrosis (AUC 0.95 vs. 0.97, p=0.43).
• Velacur significantly outperformed FibroScan in detecting liver fat >5% (AUC 0.94 vs. 0.79, p=0.01).
• Mean liver stiffness by MRE was 3.22±1.39 kPa; mean liver fat by MRI-PDFF was 14.2±8%.

Conclusions:

• Velacur is superior to FibroScan for non-invasive liver fat detection in MASLD.
• Both Velacur and FibroScan demonstrate comparable accuracy for liver stiffness assessment.
• These findings support the use of Velacur as a valuable tool for MASLD assessment.