A pilot approach for quantitative assessment of liver fibrosis using ultrasound: preliminary results in 79 cases.
OBJECTIVE
Ultrasound is noninvasive and useful to evaluate liver disease despite its operator dependency. This pilot study was conducted to quantitatively assess liver fibrosis using ultrasound.


METHODS
Fibrosis extraction ratios (FER) (fiber volume/total volume) of ultrasound and histological images of 8 autopsy specimens were compared. We also compared FER of ultrasound images from clinical patients (n=79) with histological fibrosis stages.


RESULTS
In the autopsy study, FER correlation coefficient between histological images and ultrasound images was 0.992. Regarding clinical patients, there was sufficient evidence to indicate differences in the distributions of FER for each fibrosis stage (Kruskal-Wallis test P<0.0001). With FER cut-off to distinguish > or =F2 from F0 and F1 defined as mean plus standard deviation of F0 and F1, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and likelihood ratio were 62, 75, 78, 57%, and 2.47, respectively. Regarding HCV cohort (n=44), they were 55, 87, 89, 50%, and 4.14, respectively. Areas under receiver operating characteristic curves were 0.78, 0.79, 0.83 and 0.83 for > or =F1, > or =F2, > or =F3 and =F4, respectively. Regarding HCV cohort, they were 0.74, 0.71, 0.79 for > or =F2, > or =3 and =4, respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
The FER method has great potential for diagnosing liver fibrosis using ultrasound.
Yamada
Hiroyuki
H
Medicine and Clinical Oncology, Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba University, 1-8-1 Inohana, Chuou-ku, Chiba 260-8670, Japan. yama11111@hotmail.com
Ebara
Masaaki
M
Yamaguchi
Tadashi
T
Okabe
Shinichirou
S
Fukuda
Hiroyuki
H
Yoshikawa
Masaharu
M
Kishimoto
Takashi
T
Matsubara
Hisahiro
H
Hachiya
Hiroyuki
H
Ishikura
Hiroshi
H
Saisho
Hiromitsu
H
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001344:Autopsy; D001706:Biopsy; D018450:Disease Progression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D066298:In Vitro Techniques; D008103:Liver Cirrhosis / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010865:Pilot Projects; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D014463:Ultrasonography