PolyU professor invents Liverscan: a portable non-invasive system for liver fibrosis assessment

16 Aug 2021

Research & Innovation Faculty of Engineering

Alcohol abuse and hepatic tissue scarring due to long-term inflammation may cause liver fibrosis. In severe cases, liver fibrosis may develop into serious problems like liver cirrhosis, dysfunction and cancer. In recent years, transient elastography (TE) diagnostic technology has emerged as a non-invasive method to assess liver fibrosis by measuring the stiffness of the liver, but it has the disadvantages of high cost and insufficient accuracy. In view of this, Ir Professor Zheng Yong-ping, Department of Biomedical Engineering of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University has led a research team to develop Liverscan, a palm-sized wireless device that combines TE with a real-time ultrasound image guided system, substantially bringing down the cost and greatly enhancing the accuracy of measurement through the real-time imaging. Its lightweight and portable design allows medical staff to perform liver fibrosis detection for patients anytime, anywhere.

System’s Interface

TE is a technology that can accurately measure the true physical stiffness of a certain spot within the liver, but the operator needs considerable experience and expertise to ensure the area being measured does not contain other, non-liver tissues that may interfere with the result, such as blood vessels or tumours. With this in mind, the team came up with the idea of combining TE with B-mode ultrasound imaging.

Liverscan has a patented B-mode ultrasound image-guided feature, so that the stiffness of liver tissues can be measured by TE with real-time guidance. This way, the operator has a map of where to measure and where to avoid, greatly improving the accuracy,

Ir Professor Zheng Yong-ping
Henry G. Leong Professor in Biomedical Engineering, Chair Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Most existing TE machines are bulky, costly and need to be set up in a clinic or hospital setting. Liverscan, however, combines two complex technologies in a palm-sized probe with built-in wireless Internet access capabilities. The operator needs only to install the application program on a tablet computer and then connect the probe to the Internet via Wi-Fi to start using the instrument. Liverscan is easy to use and at a fraction of the cost of other TE machines. Essentially, Liverscan makes liver fibrosis assessment more widely available to the public by lowering the cost, shortening the examination time, improving the measurement accuracy and taking the procedure out to people in the community. In March 2021, Liverscan won a silver medal at the Special Edition 2021 Inventions Geneva Evaluation Days - Virtual Event, an online version of the prestigious International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva.

Clinical trials are now being conducted on Liverscan with a plan for local release in 2023 and a full-scale worldwide launch in 2026.