A Diagnostic Imaging Method – Shear Wave Elastography

Shear Wave Elastography (SWE) is a non-invasive diagnostic imaging technique, that maps the elastic properties of tissues. Nowadays this modality develops increasingly in medicine across its disciplines and opens a new era of high-quality ultrasound examination because it increases the specificity and thus improves diagnostic assurance. This method is similar to manual palpation, shows elastic properties of biological tissues and provides a kind of reconstruction of the internal structure of soft tissues based on measurement of the response of tissue compression. Results: This method is already used routinely in the detection and diagnosis of breast cancer and thyroid cancer, prostate cancer, in hepatology, cardiology, view of the carotid arteries and lymphatic nodules. Standards of elasticity values for human tissues such as the mammary gland, liver, prostate or thyroid gland are progressively being created across the medical fields. Finally, the article examines its unquestioned benefit in ophthalmology. In ophthalmology, it already appears as an up-and-coming method in diagnostics and in evaluating the changes in oculomotor muscles and orbital tissues in patients with endocrine orbitopathy. Conclusion: Shear wave elastography offers three main innovations: the quantitative aspect, dimensional resolution, and real-time imaging ability. Determination of the utilization rate of this method and its inclusion into the diagnostics of endocrine orbitopathy is still a question and the subject of presently conducted clinical studies.