Ultrasonography Analysis of Liver Cirrhosis: Using Empirical Mode Decomposition

The liver fibrosis stage in patients with viral or non-viral chronic hepatitis is a pivotal factor regarding both the therapeutic options and for predicting the prognosis. Although percutaneous liver biopsy is the gold standard for diagnosing the liver fibrosis stage and predicting the outcome of the diseases, it is still an invasive procedure and associated with a risk of complications, patient discomfort and a high cost. In addition, liver biopsy examinations may lead to false negative results due to inadequate liver tissue sampling. More over, early hepatic fibrosis always exist problems. Therefore, there is an increasing need to develop a simple, reliable and non-invasive method in order to assess the liver fibrosis stage.Ultrasonography is a suitable tool for soft tissue, especially in deeper liver. However, the ultrasonography is often mixed with unwanted reflection and ambiguous attenuation. In this study, We present a texture analysis algorithm based on empirical mode decomposition for differential diagnosis of cirrhotic and noncirrhotic livers from ultrasonography. Patients with cirrhotic liver (n=16) and subjects with noncirrhotic livers (n=10) were studied. Normalized sum entropy of 3rd intrinsic mode image is statistical significant (p<0.0001, Az = 0.774~0.854) in differentiating the noncirrhotic liver and the cirrhotic liver.