Assessment Of Liver Fibrosis By Ultrasonic Elastography And Contrast Enhanced Ultrasonography

Objective: To evaluate the diagnostic performance of ultrasonic elastography combined with contrast enhanced ultrasonography in quantitative or semi-quantitative assessment of liver fibrosis. Methods: Rat Liver fibrosis model was established. According to the degree of liver fibrosis they were divided into three groups, S1 (11 cases), S2 (9 cases), S3 (7 cases) and a control group (10 cases) was established. Ultrasound elastography, contrast enhanced ultrasonography and two techniques combined method were used respectively for the diagnosis of the liver fibrosis. The diagnosis was compared with the pathological diagnosis to evaluate their clinical value. Results: HVAT and HA-HVTT were decreased with the severity of liver fibrosis (P<0.05). Semi-quantitative fibrosis scores and the relative content of collagen increased gradually with the severity of liver fibrosis. There was a significant negative correlation between HA-HVTT and semi-quantitative fibrosis scores or relative content of collagen (r1=-0.828, r(2)=-0.819) respectively. The sensitivity and specificity of the liver fibrosis diagnosis (S3) in contrast enhanced ultrasonography were 85.71% and 66.67% respectively, while they were 71.43% and 53.33% by ultrasound elastography respectively. However, the sensitivity and specificity were increased at 85.71% and 73.33% by ultrasound elastography combined with contrast enhanced ultrasonography respectively. Conclusion: Quantitative ultrasound parameters can be used as an indicator of noninvasive liver fibrosis diagnosis. Contrast enhanced ultrasonography combined with ultrasonic elastography improved the specificity and reduced the misdiagnosis rate.