Reliability of Shear Wave Ultrasound Elastography for Neck Lesions Identified in Routine Clinical Practice

Abstract

Intra- and inter-rater reliability of SWE is fair to excellent according to ICCs. SWE reliability is influenced appreciably by acquisition technique. Nevertheless, CORs for SWE are not negligible. To determine whether these results are acceptable clinically, further research is required to establish SWE stiffness values of normal and pathological tissues in the neck.

Shear-wave sonoelastography for assessing masseter muscle hardness in comparison with strain sonoelastography: study with phantoms and healthy volunteers

“…The present results were slightly higher than in previous studies showing an interoperator ICC of 0.72-0.97 and intraoperator ICC of 0.78-0.98. 28,[36][37][38] On the other hand, the reproducibility of strain sonoelastography is considered to be dependent on the operators' skill. Previous studies examining in vivo the muscle, kidney and heart indicated an interoperator ICC of 0.72-0.89 and intraoperator ICC of 0.47-0.96.…”

“…28,[34][35][36][37][38] Regarding the masseter muscle, its hardness in patients with temporomandibular disorder accompanied by myofascial pain has been clarified to be greater than those of healthy volunteers. 11,12,14 The difference between the left and right hardness of the masseter muscles in patients was greater.…”

“…This technique is expected to lead to a reduction in operator dependency, high reproducibility and quantitative evaluation. 28,[34][35][36][37][38] However, there are few reports on available normative values of in vivo tissue in head and neck fields. 24 The first purpose of this study was to experimentally clarify the reliability on measurement using shear-wave sonoelastography compared with strain sonoelastography with the use of muscle phantoms that sufficiently covered the actual hardness of the human masseter muscle at clenching.…”

Applicability of Shear Wave Elastography of the Major Salivary Glands: Values in Healthy Patients and Effects of Gender, Smoking and Pre-Compression

“…In this context, elastography is thought to add valuable information about the tissue stiffness and, consequently, the potential malignancy of a lesion. Although strain elastography is often described as operator dependent because of the manual compression performed during the measurement, more recently developed techniques for SWE are supposed to be independent of the examiner because the push pulses are generated automatically (Badea et al 2013a;Bhatia et al 2012aBhatia et al , 2013aBhatia et al , 2013b. Numerous descriptions of successful application of SWE have been reported, for example, in the liver, thyroid, breast and prostate (Au et al 2014;Beland et al 2014;Cebi Olgun et al 2014;Fukuhara et al 2014;Lin et al 2014;Woo et al 2014).…”

Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse Imaging in the Differential Diagnosis of an Ectopic Intrathyroidal Thymus

“…Previous studies suggest ARFI elastography as a useful tool in the differentiation of malign and benign thyroid nodules with or without in combination with gray-scale ultrasonography fi ndings [10][11][12].…”