Ultrasound parametric imaging and image analysis for breast cancer characterisation and treatment monitoring

Thesis

Breast cancer research based on medical ultrasound has traditionally focused on providing early diagnosis and breast cancer classification/characterisation. However, with the advances in cancer therapy treatments and innovations in cancer drug developments, developing methods for treatment monitoring is becoming ever more important. In particular fibrotic change in breast cancer is a common after-effect that accompanies successful breast cancer chemotherapy treatment where breast tumour cells are eradicated and replaced by fibrous tissue. As a result, the ability to monitor fibrotic changes can be used to indicate the effectiveness of chemotherapy treatments. Ultrasound spectral parametric imaging is a method that looks at the information embedded in the frequency/spectral domain of ultrasound RF signals and can be used to characterise tissue ultrasound backscattering properties. In this thesis ultrasound spectral parametric imaging is first applied to characterise breast fibrosis and its efficacy for monitoring breast cancer neoadjuvant chemotherapy treatment is subsequently investigated in a pilot study. The pilot study suggests that an increase in ultrasound spectral intercept is able to indicate fibrotic changes before and after treatments. These encouraging results suggest further work is considered to determine the suitability for monitoring intermediate changes. As histopathology images are considered as the gold standard in breast cancer pathology, ultrasound parametric images need to be studied and compared against histopathology so information provided in ultrasound parametric images can be better understood. A new registration method is shown to improve the alignment of ultrasound parametric images and histopathology images that facilitates the comparison between the images. The registration method is based on the coherent point drift (CPD) algorithm and the thin plate spline (TPS) method. All of the results show that ultrasound spectral parametric imaging is a promising tool for providing further understanding of breast cancer changes during therapy, which in turn will lead to improved breast cancer treatment monitoring and planning.

Authors: Chuang, B

• Publication date: 2014
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-g7m1o2kg4
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: cancer treatment monitoring; breast cancer; image registration; ultrasound imaging; parametric imaging
• Subjects: Biomedical engineering