Sonographic Elasticity Imaging of Acute and Chronic Deep Venous Thrombosis in Humans

Abstract

In this population, sonographic elasticity imaging performs at least as well as thrombus echogenicity. Thrombus aging using elasticity imaging would be particularly helpful in evaluating symptoms in patients with post-thrombotic syndrome.

Advanced imaging in acute and chronic deep vein thrombosis

“…Rubin et al used the wall of the vein as standard but the hardness difference estimate was conservative due to lack of another standard reference (31). Another limitation is that it is difficult to distinguish between subacute and chronic thrombi that are closer in age (29).…”

“…SEI is in preliminary stages of investigations and there is limited data on its ability to determine the age of DVT in human subjects (26,29,30). It is highly operator dependent.…”

Added value of two-dimensional shear wave elastography to ultrasonography for staging common femoral vein thrombi

“…Thus, it is important for the clinician to know the DVT age. Although US parameters (vein diameter and echogenicity of thrombi) are helpful for staging DVT, the optimal diagnostic threshold is still controversial due to wide disparity in different studies [6,8,9]. Additionally, it is also challenging to stage thrombi with other imaging modalities such as magnetic resonance (MR), computed tomography (CT), and nuclear techniques [10][11][12][13][14].…”

“…However, these studies were based on either animal or experimental models and had analyzed the evolution of thrombi elasticity only in acute stages. Few studies have evaluated US elasticity imaging of thrombi in humans [6,19]. Moreover, all the thrombi elasticity results of these studies were not based on 2D-SWE [6,[16][17][18][19].…”

“…However, another important issue is the therapeutic strategy, which highly depends on the thrombi age, acute thrombi being initially treated with anticoagulant, whereas chronic thrombi may need no therapy [3,4]. It is a widespread approach to use the onset of symptoms for defining DVT age [3][4][5][6]. Surprisingly, most patients who develop a DVT are asymptomatic [7].…”