Review of diagnostic techniques of hepatic fibrosis

With increasing innovations aimed at the treatment of chronic liver disease (CLD), the precise staging of liver fibrosis is important to help establish efficacious management of disease activity in each patient. The development of biomarkers capable of non-invasive staging of fibrosis in the liver is challenging as fibrogenesis is a part of the normal wound healing response. There is an array of non-invasive methods, including serum biomarker assays, and imaging techniques such as transient elastography. The degree of implementation of non-invasive diagnostic tests for liver fibrosis differs all over the world, and still remains limited. Liver biopsy so far is the mainstay of diagnosing hepatic fibrosis. Precise staging of liver fibrosis is essential in management of patients. This review provides a systematic overview of various techniques, as well as both approaches based on direct and indirect biomarkers to stage fibrosis, and covers recent studies related to hepatic fibrosis.