Quantitative analysis of liver fibrosis in rats with shearwave dispersion ultrasound vibrometry: Comparison with dynamic mechanical analysis

Ultrasonic elastography, a non-invasive technique for assessing the elasticity properties of tissues, has shown promising results for disease diagnosis. However, biological soft tissues are viscoelastic in nature. Shearwave dispersion ultrasound vibrometry (SDUV) can simultaneously measure the elasticity and viscosity of tissue using shear wave propagation speeds at different frequencies. In this paper, the viscoelasticity of rat livers was measured quantitatively by SDUV for normal (stage F0) and fibrotic livers (stage F2). Meanwhile, an independent validation study was presented in which SDUV results were compared with those derived from dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), which is the only mechanical test that simultaneously assesses the viscoelastic properties of tissue. Shear wave speeds were measured at frequencies of 100, 200, 300 and 400 Hz with SDUV and the storage moduli and loss moduli were measured at the frequency range of 1–40 Hz with DMA. The Voigt viscoelastic model was used in the two methods. The mean elasticity and viscosity obtained by SDUV ranged from 0.84 ± 0.13 kPa (F0) to 1.85 ± 0.30 kPa (F2) and from 1.12 ± 0.11 Pa s (F0) to 1.70 ± 0.31 Pa s (F2), respectively. The mean elasticity and viscosity derived from DMA ranged from 0.62 ± 0.09 kPa (F0) to 1.70 ± 0.84 kPa (F2) and from 3.38 ± 0.32 Pa s (F0) to 4.63 ± 1.30 Pa s (F2), respectively. Both SDUV and DMA demonstrated that the elasticity of rat livers increased from stage F0 to F2, a finding which was consistent with previous literature. However, the elasticity measurements obtained by SDUV had smaller differences than those obtained by DMA, whereas the viscosities obtained by the two methods were obviously different. We suggest that the difference could be related to factors such as tissue microstructure, the frequency range, sample size and the rheological model employed. For future work we propose some improvements in the comparative tests between SDUV and DMA, such as enlarging the harmonic frequency range of the shear wave to highlight the role of viscosity, finding an appropriate rheological model to improve the accuracy of tissue viscoelasticity estimations.