- Poster presentation
- Open Access
- Published:
Use of ultrasound elasticity imaging to monitor the response of a primary breast cancer to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in one patient in a pilot study
Breast Cancer Research volume 13, Article number: P43 (2011)
Introduction
Neoadjuvant chemotherapy is used as the primary treatment for locally advanced breast cancer to reduce tumour size and protect against metastatic spread. Monitoring the response to chemotherapy is achieved mainly by clinical assessment, which may prove unsatisfactory. This proof-of-principle study is to determine if changes of size and texture in the elastogram can track tumour response.
Methods
A young woman with an invasive ductal carcinoma, visible on mammography and ultrasound (US), was treated with seven cycles of chemotherapy. Diagnostic mammography, MRI and core biopsy studies were performed. B-mode US and elastography datasets were collected in two planes prior to each cycle using a coarse calcification within the tumour as a constant reference point. Seven sequential strain images, each 3 weeks apart, were collected in total. The ratio of tissue strain within and outside the mass was calculated as an indicator of tumour response. The findings were compared with the post-chemotherapy MRI and mastectomy histology.
Results
The tumour showed almost complete histological response to chemotherapy. Sequential elastography studies demonstrated significant ratio changes in stiffness in tumour and peritumoral areas.
Conclusion
Preliminary results suggest the changes in tumour and peritumour stiffness caused by chemotherapy are detectable by ultrasound elastography. Further investigation is required to evaluate the potential of elastography as a monitoring tool for chemotherapy treatment.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
About this article
Cite this article
English, R., Di Battista, A., Adams, R. et al. Use of ultrasound elasticity imaging to monitor the response of a primary breast cancer to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in one patient in a pilot study. Breast Cancer Res 13 (Suppl 1), P43 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1186/bcr2995
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/bcr2995
Keywords
- Breast Cancer
- Advanced Breast Cancer
- Primary Breast Cancer
- Invasive Ductal Carcinoma
- Histological Response