Comparison of 2-D Shear Wave Elastography and Transient Elastography for Assessing Liver Fibrosis in Chronic Hepatitis B

This study compared 2-D shear wave elastography (SWE) and transient elastography (TE) for liver fibrosis staging in patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) infection using liver biopsy as the reference standard. Patients with CHB infection who underwent liver biopsy were consecutively included. After exclusions, 257 patients were analyzed. Two-dimensional SWE resulted in a significantly higher rate of reliable measurements (98.1%, 252/257) than TE (93.0%, 239/257) (p = 0.011). Liver stiffness measurements of the two examinations exhibited a strong correlation (r = 0.835, p   0.05). Two-dimensional SWE had diagnostic accuracy comparable to that of TE for liver fibrosis staging. The measurements that the two techniques provide are not interchangeable.