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Transforming liver care with ultrasound: helping detect fatty liver disease earlier
Fatty liver disease is emerging as a silent global epidemic, with many people unaware they are at risk because symptoms are often mild or nonexistent until the disease progresses. Nearly 40% of the global population is affected by fatty liver disease, yet it remains underdiagnosed and untreated, making early and reliable assessments increasingly important for disease management.[i],[ii]
Liver diseases currently represent a significant portion of the global disease burden with the prevalence of fatty liver disease increasing significantly over the last three decades.[i] By 2030, an estimated 357 million people worldwide are expected to be living with fatty liver disease[iii], underscoring the urgent need for broader awareness, earlier assessment and accessible tools that can help clinicians better evaluate liver health.
Liver health is closely connected to metabolic health. Patients living with obesity, diabetes or other metabolic risk factors may be at increased risk of chronic liver disease. Liver care requires collaboration and tools that are accessible, scalable and practical in everyday clinical settings.
As a widely available and familiar modality, ultrasound plays a key role in identifying liver changes and guiding next steps in management.[iv] As the clinical burden grows, so does the need for tools that are accessible and can support noninvasive liver health assessment.
Ultrasound can help clinicians visualize changes, assess tissue characteristics and guide next steps in patient management. With continued innovation, ultrasound is also helping clinicians move beyond image acquisition toward more quantitative information that can support more confident liver assessment.
Seeing the liver differently
Today, ultrasound is also moving beyond image acquisition alone. There is a demand for ultrasound technology that accelerates diagnosis and provides insights, especially in environments constrained by time and resources. With quantitative tools designed to support more consistent assessment, clinicians can gain additional information to help evaluate liver fat and stiffness, which are important markers in the broader liver-care pathway.
“Meeting the demands of modern healthcare requires forward-thinking innovation, and redefining what ultrasound can deliver—today and into the future—is central to that mission,” said Karley Yoder, CEO, Comprehensive Care and Women’s Health Ultrasound (CCWHU), Advanced Imaging Solutions, GE HealthCare. “LOGIQ ultrasound systems are built to raise the standard of diagnostic confidence, productivity and precision across a wide range of clinical applications—from routine exams to complex abdominal and liver assessment—helping clinicians move from image acquisition to clinical insight faster while seamlessly evolving with next-generation technologies to meaningfully improve patient care.”
For more than 30 years, LOGIQ™ ultrasound systems have continually evolved with advanced solutions designed to help clinicians assess and manage liver disease across the patient journey. Building on this legacy, GE HealthCare’s broader CCWHU portfolio—including Versana and Vscan Air™—helps expand access to liver assessment, supporting earlier detection and more consistent insight across care settings.
From image to insight
GE HealthCare recently introduced Ultrasound-Guided Fat Fraction (UGFF) to its LOGIQ ultrasound systems, designed to help clinicians quantify liver fat burden. UGFF integrates multivariable features to enhance the accuracy and reproducibility of liver fat quantification. The algorithm is designed to provide a more comprehensive estimation of liver fat fraction and support improved diagnostic confidence and clinical decision-making.
“In my opinion, tools like UGFF have the potential to become part of routine ultrasound examinations because they can help clinicians identify steatosis earlier and more consistently,” said Assistant Professor, Vasileios Rafailidis. “Conventional ultrasound techniques such as B-mode can fail to detect steatosis of less than 20 percent, but even patients with steatosis ranging from five to ten percent are still at high risk for tumor occurrence (hepatocellular carcinoma), cirrhosis, fibrosis, and other cardiometabolic diseases. UGFF can do this accurately and allow us to make an accurate diagnosis.”
For clinicians, that can mean more information during an ultrasound exam. For patients, it can mean a clearer picture of liver health at a time when lifestyle changes, monitoring or additional clinical follow-up may make a meaningful difference.
Jen B’s story: How advanced technology can change what we see and why prioritizing your health matters
For Jen B., it wasn’t just knowledge of her liver health status that made the difference, it was the access to advanced ultrasound technology and the proactive steps she took to monitor her health.
As a Clinical Applications Specialist at GE HealthCare, Jen works closely with ultrasound systems every day. But her personal experience reinforced how advanced imaging tools can help reveal findings that may otherwise go unnoticed and encourage patients to take a closer look at their health.
When Jen underwent a liver scan, the results revealed subtle signs that warranted a closer look. Those early insights prompted her to be more diligent about follow-up care and shaped the way she approached ongoing monitoring and evaluation.
Her experience highlights two important realities: the value of advocating for your own health, and the continued evolution of imaging technology that can further support what clinicians are able to visualize and assess—set against a care pathway that is not always clearly defined, leaving patients uncertain about next steps. In her case, it was ultimately a personal recommendation that led her to pursue a CT scan, where a lesion was identified and later confirmed as benign on ultrasound.
Jen’s story underscores the importance of clinician familiarity with emerging ultrasound innovations. As ultrasound technology continues to advance beyond traditional imaging, clinicians must be equipped not only to capture images, but to leverage tools that can provide additional information to support clinical decision-making and patient understanding.
Turning purpose into progress: Nantia M’s story
Across GE HealthCare, liver diseases are more than a clinical topic, it is personal.
Nantia M. became a liver-health advocate after losing a family member to a liver disease. That experience now helps drive her purpose at GE HealthCare: supporting innovation that gives clinicians more advanced tools to better evaluate liver health and raising awareness to help patients feel more supported throughout a care pathway that can often feel disconnected.
For Nantia as Segment Manager of General Imaging Ultrasound in Eastern Europe at GE HealthCare, the mission is deeply personal. “If my work helps a clinician identify liver diseases earlier and that means someone can stay with their family for more years, then this is all worth it,” she shares. “That is the reason I can keep fighting for this.”
She also sees an opportunity to build greater support around liver care, learning from other disease areas where clearer guidelines, screening conversations, earlier diagnosis, and multidisciplinary collaboration among clinicians have helped patients feel more supported throughout their care journey.
Stories like hers underscore the human impact behind the technology. With a disease that can be as silent as liver disease, action and awareness can be powerful.
The future of liver care
The stories of Jen B., Nantia M., and many others like theirs highlight the growing importance of innovation in liver care and the potential of advanced ultrasound technology to help clinicians identify fatty and fibrotic liver disease earlier, monitor progression and support more informed care decisions. Through continued advancements in imaging and precision care, GE HealthCare is helping shape a more proactive future for liver care.
June 11th is Global Fatty Liver Day - a call to action for patients, clinicians, health systems and innovators. It is a moment to raise awareness of a disease that affects millions of people. It is also a reminder that awareness, earlier insight and access to the proper tools can help support clinicians and patients, and guide more informed conversations about liver health.
i Wong, Vincent Wai‑Sun, Mattias Ekstedt, Grace Lai‑Hung Wong, and Hannes Hagström. “Changing Epidemiology, Global Trends and Implications for Outcomes of NAFLD.” Journal of Hepatology 79, no. 3 (2023): 842–852. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhep.2023.04.036.
ii Klein, Hayden E. “Alarming Rise in Liver Disease Amid Global Fatty Liver Day 2025.” American Journal of Managed Care, June 12, 2025. https://www.ajmc.com/view/alarming-rise-in-liver-disease-amid-global-fatty-liver-day-2025.
iii Global Liver Institute. Global Fatty Liver Day. Accessed May 2026. https://globalfattyliverday.com/.
iv Maruyama, H., & Kato, N. (2019). Advances in ultrasound diagnosis in chronic liver diseases. Clinical and Molecular Hepatology, 25(2), 160–167. https://doi.org/10.3350/cmh.2018.1013.
JB38448XX June 2026
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