In-Vivo Validation of 3D Multi-Frequency Liver Shear Wave Absolute Vibro-Elastography with an xMATRIX Array

Liver fibrosis arises from chronic liver diseases, such as hepatitis B, C, and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis and can result in cirrhosis and death. Magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) is commonly regarded as the imaging-based gold-standard for fibrosis staging. With the aid of a state-of-the-art matrix array transducer, our previous 3D ultrasound shear wave absolute vibro-elastography (S-WAVE) imaging was able to generate hepatic stiffness measurements which are comparable to MRE. In this work, we introduce multi-frequency S-WAVE imaging with a matrix array transducer, to provide more robust and reliable measurements by shorter overall exam time. The system was characterized with three liver tissue phantoms of different elasticity using the MRE results as the ground truth. Six healthy volunteers and six patients who have chronic liver diseases were imaged. Our results indicate that measurements from multi-frequency 3D S-WAVE with a matrix array transducer correlated better to MRE, compared to the readings from the transient elastography method (FibroScan, Echosens).