Development of liver surface nodularity quantification program and its clinical application in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

The liver morphological changes in relation to fibrosis stage in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) have not yet been clearly understood. This study was to develop a liver surface nodularity (LSN) quantification program and to compare the fibrosis grades in simple steatosis (SS) and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Thirty subjects (7 normal controls [NC], 12 SS and 11 NASH) were studied. LSN quantification procedure was bias correction, boundary detection, segmentation and LSN measurement. LSN scores among three groups and fibrosis grades compared using Kruskal-Wallis H test. Diagnostic accuracy was determined by calculating the area under the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve. Mean LSN scores were NC 1.30 +/- 0.09, SS 1.54 +/- 0.21 and NASH 1.59 +/- 0.23 (p = 0.008). Mean LSN scores according to fibrosis grade (F) were F0 1.30 +/- 0.09, F1 1.45 +/- 0.17 and F2&F3 1.67 +/- 0.20 (p = 0.001). The mean LSN score in F2&F3 is significantly higher than that in F1 (p = 0.019). The AUROC curve to distinguish F1 and F2&F3 was 0.788 (95% CI 0.595-0.981, p = 0.019) at a cut-off LSN score greater than 1.48, and its diagnostic accuracy had 0.833 sensitivity and 0.727 specificity. This study developed LSN program and its clinical application demonstrated that the quantitative LSN scores can help to differentially diagnose fibrosis stage in NAFLD.