The use of contrast-enhanced ultrasound with a second generation contrast medium: preliminary report in the dog

摘要

Contrast-enhanced ultrasound has gained increasing interest in recent years in human and veterinary medicine. In human medicine it is routinely used to characterize liver lesions (Quaia 2007; Rossi et al. 2008), while in veterinary medicine it has been recently used in small animals to study lymphomatous lymph nodes as well as lesions of the liver and spleen (Salwei et al. 2003; O’Brien et al. 2004; Salwei et al. 2005; Rossi et al. 2008). Second generation microbubble contrast agents present a diameter less than red blood cells and are composed of a shell of biocompatible materials and a low-solubility filling gas.