Nov 14, 2023
Attendees will hear about the potential for ultrasound-derived fat fraction to be an alternative tool for MRI in assessing hepatic steatosis.
Yi Dong, MD, from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, will present findings that show how ultrasound-derived fat fraction can detect hepatic steatosis using MRI-derived proton density fat fraction as the reference standard.
Several ultrasound platforms now provide quantitative measures of hepatic steatosis. One of these is ultrasound-derived fat fraction, which combines attenuation and backscatter quantification. In their study, Dong and colleagues wanted to explore the role of this platform in detecting and assessing hepatic steatosis, with MRI-derived proton density fat fraction being used as the reference standard.
They included 113 participants in their prospective study. Of these, 39 had type 2 diabetes mellitus while 76 had nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. The team reported that the median ultrasound-derived fat fraction in the patients was 9.2%.
It also found good correlation between ultrasound-derived fat fraction and MRI-derived proton density fat fraction (p = 0.764, p < 0.001).
The researchers additionally reported that ultrasound-derived fat fraction had good accuracy in diagnosing nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.865, a sensitivity of 67.1%, and a specificity of 89.2%.
Finally, the team found that the inter- and intraobserver agreement of ultrasound-derived fat fraction were excellent and 0.948 and 0.904-0.969, respectively (p < 0.001 for both).
See what else the team had to say about this ultrasonic method in this session.
