Ultrasound Imaging, Spectroscopy and Ultrasound Imaging of Vascular Blood Flow as Early Indicators of Breast Cancer Response to Neoadjuvant Treatment.

We have previously demonstrated that high-frequency ultrasound and spectroscopy, and recently conventional-frequency ultrasound and spectroscopy may be used to detect cell death in vitro, in situ and in vivo. The method can detect different forms of cell death and has been demonstrated to be sensitive to apoptotic, necrotic and mitotic cell death. The objectives of this study are to evaluate the use of ultrasound imaging and spectroscopy as a predictive marker of advanced tumour response to combined chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Since neoadjuvant treatments may also act on tumour vasculature to "normalize" it we will also evaluate blood-vessel imaging by standard Doppler-imaging and with standard higher-resolution imaging using clinically approved microbubble contrast agents. The main goal, as described above, is to select the best ultrasound spectroscopy parameter to use as an early predictor of pathological complete response.