Novel Quantitative Liver Steatosis Assessment Method With Ultrasound Harmonic Imaging

Area of Science:

• Hepatology
• Medical Imaging
• Biomarker Development

Background:

• Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) is a prevalent condition with a significant progression rate to severe stages.
• Accurate, noninvasive, and cost-effective biomarkers are crucial for evaluating liver steatosis and guiding clinical decisions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the diagnostic performance of a novel reference frequency method-based ultrasound attenuation coefficient estimation (RFM-ACE) in both fundamental (FI) and harmonic (HI) imaging.
• To compare the accuracy and reproducibility of RFM-ACE-HI and RFM-ACE-FI against MRI-PDFF for liver steatosis detection and grading.

Main Methods:

• A prospective study involving 130 subjects compared RFM-ACE-HI and RFM-ACE-FI values with MRI-PDFF.
• Diagnostic performance was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis.
• Reproducibility of RFM-ACE-HI was assessed via interobserver agreement.

Main Results:

• RFM-ACE-HI demonstrated a strong correlation with MRI-PDFF (R=0.88), significantly outperforming RFM-ACE-FI (R=0.65).
• The area under the ROC curve for RFM-ACE-HI in staging liver steatosis (S≥1, S≥2) was excellent (0.97, 0.98), compared to RFM-ACE-FI (0.76, 0.80).
• RFM-ACE-HI exhibited high reproducibility with an interobserver agreement of R=0.97.

Conclusions:

• The novel RFM-ACE-HI method provides high accuracy and reproducibility for diagnosing liver steatosis.
• This technique holds significant clinical potential for early MASLD intervention and treatment monitoring.