Liver stiffness quantification in biopsy- proven nonalcoholic fatty liver disease patients using shear wave elastography in comparison with transient elastography

Purpose: This study prospectively assessed the performance of liver stiffness measurements using point shear-wave elastography (p-SWE) in comparison with transient elastography (TE) in patients with biopsy-proven nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Methods: Fifty-six consecutive adult patients with a histological diagnosis of NAFLD prospectively underwent TE and p-SWE on the same day. The median of 10 measurements (SWE-10), the first five (SWE-5), and the first three (SWE-3) measurements were analyzed for p-SWE. Liver biopsy was considered as the reference standard for liver fibrosis grade. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and areas under the ROC curves (AUROCs) were calculated to assess the performance of TE and p-SWE for the diagnosis of significant (F2-F4) and advanced fibrosis (F3-F4). Results: Forty-six patients (27 men, 19 women; mean age, 54.7 +/- 9.1 years) had valid p-SWE and TE measurements. Twenty-seven patients (58.7%) had significant fibrosis and 18 (39.1%) had advanced fibrosis. For significant fibrosis, both SWE-10 (AUROC, 0.787; P=0.002) and SWE-5 (AUROC, 0.809; P=0.001) provided higher diagnostic performance than TE (AUROC, 0.719; P=0.016) and SWE-3 (AUROC, 0.714; P=0.021), albeit without statistical significance (P=0.301). For advanced fibrosis, SWE-5 showed higher diagnostic performance (AUROC, 0.809; P<0.001) than TE (AUROC, 0.799; P<0.001), SWE-10 (AUROC, 0.797; P<0.001), and SWE-3 (AUROC, 0.736; P=0.003), although the differences were not statistically significant (P=0.496). The optimal SWE-10 and SWE-5 cutoff values were >= 8.4 and >= 7.8 for significant fibrosis, and >= 9.1 and >= 8.8 for advanced fibrosis, respectively. Conclusion: TE and p-SWE showed similar performance for the diagnosis of significant and advanced fibrosis in NAFLD patients.

Automated summary

This study found that transient elastography and point shear-wave elastography performed similarly in diagnosing significant and advanced fibrosis in patients with NAFLD, although one modality may offer slightly better diagnostic performance in some aspects.