Abstract
An ultrasonic imaging apparatus and method are described for monitoring the progress of therapy for pathology such as lesions, tumors, and metastases by means of contrast agent imaging. A sequence of images are acquired as a bolus of contrast agent infuses the tissue containing the pathology. A contrast wash-in time parameter is calculated for both the tumor and normal tissue, and a ratio is calculated of the two wash-in time parameters (called WITR) which removes the effects of variations in the procedure from one therapy monitoring session to another. A difference curve of the time-intensity curves of the pathology and normal tissue is also produced, which is similarly immune to procedural variations. The motional effects of respiration can be taken into account by detecting the position of a landmark such as the diaphragm in each of the images of the sequence and discarding from processing those which exhibit a change in the position of the landmark relative to the probe.
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