Real-time Tissue Elastography (RTE) is a newly developed, noninvasive method that enables to visualize the elasticity of target tissue or tumors. It has been proved to be very useful for the assessment of mammary or thyroid tumors. Here, we performed RTE and assessed its diagnostic usefulness for common liver tumors.
Methods: Subjects were 47 liver tumors including 14 HCCs, 12 metastatic liver tumors, and 21 hemangiomas. We performed RTE as follows; using Hitachi EUB-8500 and EUP-L52 probe, we compressed the liver surface slightly with the probe to induce appropriate strain to liver tumors and obtained their color strain images. Then, we classified the obtained strain images into five groups in contrast to the surrounding liver: category 1 (even strain pattern), category 2 (less strain area in the tumor < 50%), category 3 (less strain area = about 50%), category 4 (50% < less strain area <90%), and category 5 (less strain area > 90%), respectively.
Results: Of 14 HCCs, twelve were classified as category 4. Of 12 metastatic liver tumors, eleven were classified as category 4 or 5. Of 21 hemangiomas, 17 were classified as category 1 or 2. RTE revealed that HCC or metastatic liver tumors had less strain than the surrounding liver whereas most hemangiomas did not.
Conclusion: We found that common liver tumors had their own strain patterns which could help to make a differential diagnosis. RTE is considered to be a noninvasive and promising method that provides us useful information regarding liver tumor strain.