Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine, Vol 15, Issue 8 563-570, Copyright © 1996 by American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine
An evaluation of hepatic ultrasound speed in injury models in rats: correlation with tissue constituents
T. Matsuhashi, N. Yamada, H. Shinzawa and T. Takahashi
Second Department of Internal Medicine, Yamagata University School of Medicine, Japan.
The speed of sound through the livers of 32 male Sprague-Dawley rats was
measured. The study population consisted of four experimental groups:
control, acute liver injury induced by carbon tetrachloride, fatty liver
induced by a choline-deficient diet, and liver cirrhosis induced by
administration of N-diethylnitrosamine. To examine possible correlations
between the speed of sound and liver histology, biochemical measurements of
the water, fat, and collagen content were made. The aim of the present
study was to determine the effects of the characteristics of diseased liver
tissue on the speed of sound, by studying the tissue constituents
biochemically and by using a more accurate measurement of the speed of
sound. The sound speed was 1591.6 +/- 6.7 m/s in the acute liver injury
group, 1531.4 +/- 18.4 m/s in the fatty liver group, and 1624.9 +/- 6.7 m/s
in the liver cirrhosis group. No significant correlation existed between
the speed of sound and the water content in all groups taken together,
whereas a good correlation was found in the fatty liver group (P <
0.0001, r = -0.858) and in cirrhosis (P < 0.0001, r = 0.760) when the
groups were examined separately. These results indicate that the speed of
sound is useful for diagnosing fatty liver for predicting the fat content.
