Monitoring breast cancer response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy with ultrasound signal statistics and integrated backscatter

Abstract

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) is used in patients with breast cancer to reduce tumor focus, metastatic risk, and patient mortality. Monitoring NAC effects is necessary to capture resistant patients and stop or change treatment. The existing methods for evaluating NAC results have some limitations. The aim of this study was to assess the tumor response at an early stage, after the first doses of the NAC, based on the variability of the backscattered ultrasound energy, and backscatter statistics. The backscatter statistics has not previously been used to monitor NAC effects.