Prospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Radiol. May 28, 2021; 13(5): 137-148
Published online May 28, 2021. doi: 10.4329/wjr.v13.i5.137
Comparison of point and two-dimensional shear wave elastography of the spleen in healthy subjects
Friederike Nowotny, Julian Schmidberger, Patrycja Schlingeloff, Andreas Binzberger, Wolfgang Kratzer
Friederike Nowotny, Julian Schmidberger, Patrycja Schlingeloff, Andreas Binzberger, Wolfgang Kratzer, Department of Internal Medicine I, University Hospital Ulm, Ulm 89081, Germany
Author contributions: Kratzer W und Nowotny F designed the study; Nowotny F, Binzberger A, and Kratzer W performed the research; Schmidberger J und Schlingeloff P analyzed the data; Nowotny F and Kratzer W wrote the paper; and all authors revised the manuscript for final submission.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved by the local ethics committee and conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (No. 415/15). All data were analyzed anonymously.
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Wolfgang Kratzer, MD, Professor, Department of Internal Medicine I, University Hospital Ulm, Albert-Einstein-Allee 23, Ulm 89081, Germany. wolfgang.kratzer@uniklinik-ulm.de
Received: February 19, 2021
Peer-review started: February 19, 2021
First decision: March 28, 2021
Revised: March 31, 2021
Accepted: May 22, 2021
Article in press: May 22, 2021
Published online: May 28, 2021
Core Tip

Core Tip: Measurement of shear wave velocity in the spleen has been increasingly used in prognostic assessment of esophageal varices and as a marker of portal hypertension. The current recommendations of medical societies for splenic elastography note methodological limitations in transient elastography. Currently, whether the different elastography methods and shear wave measurements with different ultrasonic devices provide comparable results has not been clarified. Our results show that the most reliable measurements for all devices were obtained at the lower pole of the spleen. However, absolute values of splenic shear wave elastography measurements are not transferable between manufacturers or models.