Preliminary study of shear wave dispersion imaging in the evaluation of hepatic acute graft-versus-host disease / 中华超声影像学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To investigate the feasibility of using shear wave dispersion (SWD) imaging in evaluating acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) of the liver.Methods:A total of 42 Wistar rats were used as receptors and 10 Fischer 344 rats were used as donors for bone marrow transplantation to establish aGVHD models. Six rats were randomly selected every week for clinical observation and scoring. Then, ultrasonic SWD was performed to obtain shear wave speed (SWS) and shear wave dispersion slope (SWDS). Then, the histological characteristics were used as a reference standard, and the rats were divided into two groups the group without aGVHD (nGVHD group) and the group with aGVHD. The differences in the clinical score and SWD values between the two groups were compared, the meaningful indexes were screened by binary Logistic regression analysis, and the joint prediction parameters were obtained. The ROC curve was plotted and the diagnostic efficiency was compared. The correlations between SWS, SWDS, clinical score and pathological grade were analyzed.Results:Clinical score, SWS, and SWDS in aGVHD group were higher than those in the nGVHD group (all P<0.05). The correlation between SWDS and pathological grade ( r=0.774, P<0.001) was higher than those between SWS, clinical score and pathological grade ( r=0.579, P=0.005; r=0.452, P=0.034). Logistic regression showed that SWDS was a significant indicator. In addition, the AUC values determined by SWDS and predictive parameters were (0.859, 0.886), which were significantly higher than the AUC of the clinical score (0.760, P<0.05). Conclusions:SWD imaging technology may become a promising method to evaluate hepatic aGVHD.