Recent Advances in Endosonography—Elastography: Literature Review

Ultrasonographic elastography is a modality used to visualize the elastic properties of tissues. Technological advances in ultrasound equipment have supported the evaluation of elastography (EG) in endosonography (EUS). Currently, the usefulness of not only EUS-strain elastography (EUS-SE) but also...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Akira Yamamiya, Atsushi Irisawa, Koki Hoshi, Akane Yamabe, Naoya Izawa, Kazunori Nagashima, Takahito Minaguchi, Masamichi Yamaura, Yoshitsugu Yoshida, Ken Kashima, Yasuhito Kunogi, Fumi Sakuma, Keiichi Tominaga, Makoto Iijima, Kenichi Goda
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2021-08-01
Series:Journal of Clinical Medicine
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Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/10/16/3739
Description
Summary:Ultrasonographic elastography is a modality used to visualize the elastic properties of tissues. Technological advances in ultrasound equipment have supported the evaluation of elastography (EG) in endosonography (EUS). Currently, the usefulness of not only EUS-strain elastography (EUS-SE) but also EUS-shear wave elastography (EUS-SWE) has been reported. We reviewed the literature on the usefulness of EUS-EG for various diseases such as chronic pancreatitis, pancreatic solid lesion, autoimmune pancreatitis, lymph node, and gastrointestinal and subepithelial lesions. The importance of this new diagnostic parameter, “tissue elasticity” in clinical practice might be applied not only to the diagnosis of liver fibrosis but also to the elucidation of the pathogeneses of various gastrointestinal diseases, including pancreatic diseases, and to the evaluation of therapeutic effects. The most important feature of EUS-EG is that it is a non-invasive modality. This is an advantage not found in EUS-guided fine needle aspiration (EUS-FNA), which has made remarkable progress in the field of diagnostics in recent years. Further development of artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to improve the diagnostic performance of EUS-EG. Future research on EUS-EG is anticipated.
ISSN:2077-0383