'Since the introduction of the grey scale B-mode scanners, the liver has been the organ with the most extensive and fruitful applications of ultrasonography in the abdomen... Ultrasound elastography provides a functional assessment of the liver, informing on tissue elasticity and thus on the disease stage. This information is obtained with greatest ease, non invasively and very rapidly at the bedside. Accordingly, transient elastography has been recently incorporated into international guidelines for the management of chronic viral hepatitis. It has also applications in other conditions involving the liver, beside chronic hepatitis. While contrast enhanced ultrasound underwent technical improvements, but is substantially one single modality, elastography is somehow different and various modalities are available, requiring different examination techniques and providing slightly different clinical information. Most of these modalities have been introduced only in the very last few years and their properties are still poorly known to clinical ultrasonographers. Therefore, the eBook by Prof. Ioan Sporea on liver elastography is very timely presented and greatly desired.'--Foreword, p. vi.