Ultrasound elastographic techniques in focal liver lesions

Table 1 Studies reporting the cut-off value and relative sensitivity, specificity, likelihood positive ratio and likelihood negative ratio for different elastographic techniques in the differential diagnosis of benign vs malignant focal liver lesions

Ref.	Method	Study design	Cut-off1	Sens (%)	Spec (%)	LR (+ve)	LR (-ve)	Level of evidence2
Park et al[28], 2013	ARFI	Prospective,	1.82	71.8	75	2.9	0.38	4
	(m/s)	monocentric
Sandulescu et al[33], 2012	RTE	Retrospective,	170	92.5	89	8.3	0.08	4
	Hue	monocentric
Guo et al[30], 2015	ARFI-SWV	Prospective,	2.13	83.3	78	3.7	0.20	4
	(m/s)	monocentric	(ratio 1.37)	(ratio 59.6)	(ratio 77.3)	(ratio 2.6)	(ratio 0.5)
Ronot et al[32], 2015	ARFI	Prospective,	-	-	-	-	-	4
	(m/s)	Monocentric
Zhang et al[31], 2013	ARFI-VTTQ	Retrospective,	2.22	81.3	93	11.1	0.20	4
	(m/s)	monocentric

¹To differentiate malignant from benign liver lesions;

²http://www.cebm.net/oxford-centre-evidence-based-medicine-levels-evidence-march-2009. ARFI: Acoustic radiation force imaging; RTE: Real time elastography; HCC: Hepatocellular carcinoma; FNH: Focal nodal hyperplasia; SWE: Share wave elastography; SWV: Shear wave velocity; VTTQ: Virtual touch tissue quantification.