In April, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared the Lumason contrast agent from Bracco Diagnostics for characterizing liver lesions; in light of this approval, a team led by Dr. David Burrowes of the University of Calgary in Alberta evaluated the performance of CEUS for this application versus grayscale ultrasound, CT, and MRI.
The study included 224 patients presenting for evaluation of a focal liver mass. All the patients underwent ultrasound without contrast, CEUS, and CT and/or MRI. Burrowes and colleagues found that CEUS is superior to grayscale ultrasound and at least equivalent to CT and MRI for determining the malignancy of a lesion and for diagnostic accuracy.
CEUS is a necessary adjuvant to grayscale ultrasound and is comparable to CT and MR in its ability to predict malignancy and provide a diagnosis, the group concluded.
Find out just how well CEUS performed in evaluating focal liver masses compared with the other modalities in this Tuesday presentation.
