Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine, Vol 19, Issue 10 677-686, Copyright © 2000 by American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine
Ultrasonographic tissue characterization in monitoring tumor response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in locally advanced breast cancer (work in progress)
S. Huber, M. Medl, M. Vesely, H. Czembirek, I. Zuna and S. Delorme
Department of Radiology, Lainz Hospital, Vienna, Austria.
A program of computer-assisted texture analysis was applied to evaluate its
usefulness for objective description of changes in tumor architecture due
to primary medical treatment in patients with locally advanced breast
cancer. Changes in values of parameters of the statistical pattern
recognition technique were compared to ultrasonographically depictable,
subjectively recorded changes in echogenicity and echotexture (brightness,
homogeneity) and reviewed with regard to histopathologic evaluation of
tumor regression. Characteristic trends of defined quantitative texture
parameters (mean gradient, mean gray value, contrast from the co-occurrence
matrix) corresponded to visually depictable changes of the B-mode image and
underlying histopathologic changes. The results indicate that quantitative
texture analysis may aid in noninvasive monitoring of tumor response to
neoadjuvant chemotherapy.
