Harmonic Motion Imaging for Non-invasive Breast Cancer Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy Response Assessment
Tuesday, April 9, 2024
9:34am – 9:41am
Location: 412
Authors: Yangpei Liu, Columbia University Elisa Konofagou, Columbia
This study offers insights into using an oscillatory radiation force technique (HMI) for early prediction of tumor responses to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) in breast cancer. HMI uses amplitude-modulated (AM) focused ultrasound (FUS) to non-invasively interrogate tissue relative stiffness. Previous studies done by our group have demonstrated that HMI was capable of monitoring pancreatic tumor progression, characterize breast masses, and assess treatment responses in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. In this study, nine clinical breast cancer patients were enrolled and imaged during partial or complete treatment, and longitudinal HMI images were generated during the course of their NACT at three time-points prior to surgery (baseline before treatment, 3 to 4 weeks into treatment, and at the completion of treatment). The tumor HMI displacement ratio (DR) to surrounding, non-cancerous tissue was calculated at each time-point and compared with the pathological end-points from microscopic examinations. The sensitivity of HMI DR changes between the first two time-points was higher than tumor shrinkage from physical examinations. Lower baseline tumor relative stiffness and higher tumor DR increase at the second time-point were found to be associated with pathological complete response (pCR). Therefore, HMI offers great promise as a potentially valuable imaging tool in the early, non-invasive assessment/prediction of breast tumor responses to NACT.