Quantifying the Effects of Radiation on Tumour Vasculature with High-frequency Three-dimensional Power Doppler Ultrasound

Recent evidence suggests that radiation may have a significant effect on tumour vascu lature in addition to damaging tumour cell DNA. It is well established that endothelial cells are among the first cells to respond after administration of ionizing radiation in both normal and tumour tissues. It ha...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hupple, Clinton W.
Other Authors: Czarnota, Gregory J.
Language:en_ca
Published: 2010
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1807/24581
Description
Summary:Recent evidence suggests that radiation may have a significant effect on tumour vascu lature in addition to damaging tumour cell DNA. It is well established that endothelial cells are among the first cells to respond after administration of ionizing radiation in both normal and tumour tissues. It has also been suggested that microvascular dysfunction may regulate tumour response to radiotherapy at high doses. However, due to limitations in imaging the microcirculation this response is not well characterized. Advances in high-frequency ultrasound and computation methods now make it possible to acquire and analyze 3-D ultrasound data of tumour blood flow in tumour micro-circulation. This thesis outlines the work done to test the hypothesis that single dose 8 Gy radio- therapy produces changes in tumour blood vessels which can be quantified using high- frequency power Doppler ultrasound. In addition, the issue of reproducibility of power Doppler measurements and the relationship between histopathology and power Doppler measurements have been examined.