IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 2018 Dec;37(12):2593-2602. doi: 10.1109/TMI.2018.2843396. Epub 2018 Jun 4.
Despite being the solid tumor with the highest incidence in western men, prostate cancer (PCa) still lacks reliable imaging solutions that can overcome the need for systematic biopsies. Dynamic contrast-enhanced ultrasound imaging (DCE-US) allows us to quantitatively characterize the vascular bed in the prostate, due to its ability to visualize an intravenously administered bolus of contrast agents. Previous research has demonstrated that DCE-US parameters related to the vascular architecture are useful markers for the localization of PCa lesions. In this paper, we propose a novel method to assess the convective dispersion (D) and velocity (v) of the contrast bolus spreading through the prostate from three-dimensional (3D) DCE-US recordings. By assuming that D and v are locally constant, we solve the convective-dispersion equation by minimizing the corresponding regularized least-squares problem. 3D multiparametric maps of D and v were compared with 3D histopathology retrieved from the radical prostatectomy specimens of six patients. With a pixel-wise area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.72 and 0.80, respectively, the method shows diagnostic value for the localization of PCa.
尽管前列腺癌（PCa）是西方男性中发病率最高的实体肿瘤，但仍缺乏可靠的成像解决方案来替代系统活检。由于能够可视化静脉内注射的造影剂团块，动态对比增强超声成像（DCE-US）使我们能够定量描述前列腺中的血管床。先前的研究表明，与血管结构相关的 DCE-US 参数是定位 PCa 病变的有用标志物。在本文中，我们提出了一种从三维（3D）DCE-US 记录中评估对比剂团扩散通过前列腺的对流弥散（D）和速度（v）的新方法。通过假设 D 和 v 在局部上是常数，我们通过最小化相应的正则化最小二乘问题来求解对流弥散方程。将 D 和 v 的三维多参数图与从六位患者的根治性前列腺切除术标本中获得的三维组织病理学进行了比较。该方法在 PCa 定位方面具有诊断价值，其像素级受试者工作特征曲线下面积分别为 0.72 和 0.80。
