Research on prostate carcinoma

Halpern et al conducted a study to assess prostate carcinoma detection and discrimination of benign from malignant prostate tissue with contrast-

enhanced ultrasonography. 301 subjects referred for prostate biopsy were evaluated with contrast-enhanced sonography using continuous harmonic

imaging (CHI) and intermittent harmonic imaging (IHI) with interscan delay times of 0.2, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 seconds, as well as continuous color and power

Doppler. Targeted biopsy cores were obtained from sites of greatest enhancement, followed by spatially distributed cores in a modified sextant

distribution.The carcinoma detection rate of contrast-enhanced targeted cores is significantly higher when compared with sextant cores. Contrast-

enhanced transrectal sonography with IHI provides a statistically significant improvement in discrimination between benign and malignant biopsy sites.

However, given the relatively low ROC areas, this technique may not be sufficient to predict which patients have benign versus malignant disease. (link)

Research in Ferrera lab

Katherine W. Ferrara from UC Davis is conducting contrast-enhanced ultrasound related research in the following areas:

• Contrast-enhanced quantitative ultrasound imaging of cancer (link)
• Ultrasound-enhanced drug delivery across the Blood-Brain Barrier (link)
• High resolution ultrasound cancer imaging (link)