Effects of contrast-enhanced ultrasound treatment on neoadjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer.

Preclinical and clinical data indicate that contrast-enhanced ultrasound can enhance tumor perfusion and vessel permeability, thus, improving chemotherapy accumulation and therapeutic outcome. Therefore, we investigated the effects of high mechanical index (MI) contrast-enhanced Doppler ultrasound (CDUS) on tumor perfusion in breast cancer. In this prospective study, breast cancer patients were randomly assigned to receive either 18 minutes of high MI CDUS during chemotherapy infusion (n = 6) or chemotherapy alone (n = 5).

Clinical Pilot Application of Super-Resolution US Imaging in Breast Cancer.

Recently, we proved in the first measurements of breast carcinomas the feasibility of super-resolution ultrasound (US) imaging by motion-model ultrasound localization microscopy in a clinical setup. Nevertheless, pronounced in-plane and out-of-plane motions, a nonoptimized microbubble injection scheme, the lower frame rate and the larger slice thickness made the processing more complex than in preclinical investigations. Here, we compare the results of state-of-the-art contrast-enhanced to super-resolution US imaging and systematically analyze the measurements to get indications for the improvement of image acquisition and processing in the future clinical studies.

Radiomic analysis of contrast-enhanced ultrasound data.

Radiomics describes the use radiological data in a quantitative manner to establish correlations in between imaging biomarkers and clinical outcomes to improve disease diagnosis, treatment monitoring and prediction of therapy responses. In this study, we evaluated whether a radiomic analysis on contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) data allows to automatically differentiate three xenograft mouse tumour models. Next to conventional imaging biomarker classes, i.

Semi-Automated Segmentation of the Tumor Vasculature in Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound Data.

The vascular architecture in tumors contains relevant information for tumor classification and evaluation of therapy responses. To develop a reliable and user-independent analysis tool, a foreground detection algorithm was combined with a maximum-intensity projection to obtain a high signal-to-noise image from contrast-enhanced B-mode data sets, enabling vessel segmentation by thresholding. Parameters describing the density of the vascular network, the number of vessels and the number of branches were extracted.

Motion model ultrasound localization microscopy for preclinical and clinical multiparametric tumor characterization.

Super-resolution imaging methods promote tissue characterization beyond the spatial resolution limits of the devices and bridge the gap between histopathological analysis and non-invasive imaging. Here, we introduce motion model ultrasound localization microscopy (mULM) as an easily applicable and robust new tool to morphologically and functionally characterize fine vascular networks in tumors at super-resolution. In tumor-bearing mice and for the first time in patients, we demonstrate that within less than 1 min scan time mULM can be realized using conventional preclinical and clinical ultrasound devices.

Automated Generation of Reliable Blood Velocity Parameter Maps from Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound Data.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was the automated generation and validation of parametric blood flow velocity maps, based on contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) scans.

Materials And Methods: Ethical approval for animal experiments was obtained. CEUS destruction-replenishment sequences were recorded in phantoms and three different tumor xenograft mouse models.

Status and trends in the development of clinical diagnostic agents.

Contrast agents (CA) are routinely used in clinical practice to improve the diagnosis of diseases and to monitor therapy response. The majority of CA comprises small molecules accumulating at pathological sites due to vascular abnormalities, such as changes in perfusion and permeability. For many diseases, high diagnostic accuracy can be achieved with contrast-enhanced imaging.