Noninvasive techniques for evaluating liver fibrosis and cirrhosis

Are there any validated noninvasive diagnostic techniques that may be used for evaluation of liver fibrosis and cirrhosis?

Pere Ginès: This is a very important area of research because there is a tendency to try to diagnose cirrhosis or fibrosis of the liver early, so we need tools that are not invasive in order to diagnose fibrosis or cirrhosis in patients who are at risk of having liver disease. There are many of these tools. Some of them rely on different parameters of laboratory variables, and there are other tools that rely on some physical factors.

I would say in summary that the best one that exists is what is called transient elastography, which is a tool that measures the stiffness of the liver. The higher the stiffness, the higher the amount of fibrotic tissue in the liver. I think that in the future this tool or some similar tools will be very common in clinical practice to diagnose cirrhosis.