Quantitative Ultrasound Could Improve Grading of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Quantitative ultrasound could be more effective in predicting the grade of fat accumulation in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) than conventional ultrasound. In a study conducted at the University of California at San Diego, published in the American Journal of Roentgenology, researchers explored whether investigational quantitative ultrasound (QUS) parameters were more effective than conventional ultrasound (CUS) and MRI-estimated proton density fat fraction (PDFF) for predicting fat accumulation in the liver (hepatic steatosis) in non-alcoholic adults. For the study, 61 adults with confirmed NAFLD underwent QUS, CUS, and MRI examinations within 100 days of liver biopsy. Based on analysis, CUS had 51.7 percent grading accuracy. Raw and cross-validated steatosis grading accuracies were 61.7 percent and 55.0 percent, respectively, for attenuated co-efficient, 68.3 percent and 68.3 percent for backscatter co-efficient. For MRI-estimated PDFF, it was 76.7 percent and 71.3 percent. Interobserver agreements were 53.3 percent for CUS, 90 percent for attenuation coefficient, and 71.7 percent for backscatter coefficient.