Keywords:
Image verification, Diagnostic procedure, Ultrasound, Elastography, CT, Lung
Authors:
R. Kubale1, H. Wilkens2, J. Stroeder2, R. Seidel2, A. Bücker3; 1Pirmasens/DE, 2Homburg/DE, 3Homburg a.d. Saar/DE
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2013/C-1684
Purpose
Pulmonary fibrosis is a progressive disease of the lung parenchyma characterized by varying degrees of interstitial involvement with developement of fibrosis (1).
The clinical course is dismal in the majority of patients,
the median survival is less than 3 years in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (1).
Most patients,
however,
are diagnosed late in the course of disease,
when irreversible destruction of lung parenchyma has occurred.
Treatment options are very limited (2,3).
A noninvasive tool to detect changes in lung texture might be helpful for screening,
investigation of pathobiology and detection of treatment responses in this devastating disease.
In addition to the conventional US and Doppler US elastography can provide extra information with regard to the tissue’s mechanical property,
or stiffness.
Several clinical studies demonstrated,
that sonoelastography was useful for differentiating between benign and malignant breast lesions with 70.1–100% sensitivity and 41.0–98.5% specificity.
During the last 3 year several other application as ARFI measurements of liver,
elastography of lymph nodes,
and tendons gained increasing interest.
Purpose of this study is to evaluate its feasability for depicting subpleural parenchymal lung disease with US and essential influencing factors.