Abnormalities measured on 3D reconstructions of ultrasound images are more reliable and easier to reproduce than on two-dimensional (2D) ultrasound, researchers from Germany will explain on August 14th in a presentation at the International Neurosonology '97 conference sponsored by the World Federation of Neurology and the Bowman Gray School of Medicine of Wake Forest University.
According to Dr. Andreas Delcker, the lead researcher, reliability and reproducibility were especially valuable because patients in the study underwent more than one imaging examination.
While techniques like cerebral angiography remain the diagnostic gold standard, ultrasound is being applied in ways that were only dreams a few years ago.
Why are these dreams coming true today? As Delcker explained in an interview, new computer workstations are allowing 2D ultrasound data sets to be electronically reconstructed as 3D images.
Ultrasound is also less expensive than other well known imaging techniques such as MRI and CT.
In this study, Delcker and his two colleagues used a prototype magnetic sensor workstation to reconstruct transcranial ultrasound in 3D. The prototype workstation, manufactured by 3D Echotech in Munich, Germany, and recently available in Europe, is so new that its use in the United States has yet to receive formal approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (Such approval is pending and will probably occur during the fall of 1997.)
When analyzing the 3D images of transcranial ultrasound from 20 patients, Delcker and his colleagues found two things:
First, identification of intracranial arteries significantly improved
after the patients received a
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Contact: Robert Conn or Mark Wright
rconn@bgsm.edu
910-716-4587
Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center
14-Aug-1997