Clinical significance of intraoral strain elastography for diagnosing early stage tongue carcinoma: a preliminary study

The aim of this study was to estimate the clinical significance of using intraoral strain elastography to establish an early diagnosis of tongue carcinoma. A total of 17 patients (11 men, 6 women; median age 67 years; age range 38–85 years) with a tumorous lesion of the tongue suggesting that early stage tongue carcinoma were enrolled in the study. Intraoral strain elastography was performed with a small hockey stick-shaped intraoperative probe and acoustic coupling polymer gel. The elasticity of the lesions was classified into four grades, with a score of 1 indicating a very soft tissue and a score of 4 indicating a very hard tissue. The patients were divided into two groups based on the histopathologically verified malignancy: carcinoma group (n = 15) and non-malignancy group (n = 2). All patients underwent surgical resection and histopathological examination of the surgical specimen. The pathology in the carcinoma group included 12 cases of squamous cell carcinoma and three cases of carcinoma in situ. The pathology in the non-malignancy group included one case of viral stomatitis and one case of pyogenic granuloma. The elasticity score was limited to 3 or 4 in the carcinoma group and 1 or 2 in the non-malignancy group. There was no significant difference in the elasticity scores between squamous cell carcinoma and carcinoma in situ. Although limited by the small number of subjects, the present results suggest that intraoral strain elastography could be an alternative noninvasive method for diagnosing tongue carcinoma.