Shear Wave Elastography for Parotid Glands: Quantitative Analysis of Shear Elastic Modulus in Relation to Age, Gender, and Internal Architecture in Patients with Oral Cancer

Background: Recently, shear wave elastography (SWE) has been recognized as an effective tool for evaluating Sjögren’s syndrome (SS) patients. The purpose of this study was to assess the parotid glands with SWE, especially for quantitative analysis of shear elastic modulus in relation to age, gender, and internal architecture in patients with oral cancer to collect control data for SS. Methods: In total, 124 parotid glands of 62 patients with oral cancer were evaluated with SWE. The parotid glands were examined for the internal architecture (homogeneous or heterogeneous) on B-mode. The SWE allowed the operator to place regions of interest (ROIs) for parotid glands, and displayed automatically shear elastic modulus data (kPa) for each ROI. Gender and internal architecture were compared with the shear elastic modulus of the parotid glands by Mann–Whitney U-test. The comparison of age and shear elastic modulus was assessed using Spearman’s correlation coefficient. p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: The shear elastic modulus of the parotid glands was not significantly different for according to gender (males, 7.70 ± 2.22 kPa and females, 7.67 ± 2.41 kPa, p = 0.973) or internal architecture (homogeneous: 7.69 ± 2.25 kPa and heterogeneous: 7.72 ± 2.74 kPa, p = 0.981). Furthermore, the shear elastic modulus was not correlated with age (n = 124, R = −0.133, p = 0.139). Conclusion: Our study showed the control data of the shear elastic modulus of the parotid glands for SS. SWE is useful for the quantitative evaluation of the parotid glands.