Spleen structure in Hodgkin disease: ultrasonic characterization. Work in progress.

Ultrasonic waveforms backscattered from human spleens in vivo were recorded for 10 normal subjects and 21 patients with Hodgkin lymphoma prior to staging laparotomy. A measure of the structure of splenic tissue, the "mean scatterer spacing" was calculated for each subject from the recorded data. Comparison of these measurements with the results of staging laparotomy indicated that spleens involved with lymphoma are generally characterized by increased scatterer spacing compared with normal splenic tissue. The observed histologic differences between normal and lymphomatous spleens appear to account for the measured differences in tissue structure.