CONTRAT-ENHANCED US FOR ABDOMINAL RADIOLOGY: IS IT REALLY WORTHWHILE?
F. TRANQUART, A. BLEUZEN, C. HUANG

Worldwide, ultrasound is the first imaging modality for screening focal liver lesions in cancer staging or for any abdominal symptom. Because of either patient’s or technical limitations, the sensitivity of conventional sonography remains poor and generally lower than reported with other modalities such as CT-scan or MRI. Moreover, once a lesion has been detected, the foremost question is always the differentiation between a benign and malignant lesion. These limitations are reinforced by the non-specific ultrasound patterns even when using the most recent methods including harmonic or Doppler imaging. The higher accuracy reported by CT-scan and MRI is related to the use of contrast agents which allows the description of specific vascular patterns whatever the tissue specificity is. Therefore the use of contrast agents is essential first in the detection of lesions to improve the contrast-tissue ratio and secondly in the characterization which is based on the presence of contrast within the lesion according to established criteria. (...)