  Molecularly targeted contrast enhanced ultrasound (mCEUS) is a clinically
promising approach for early cancer detection through targeted imaging of
VEGFR2 (KDR) receptors. We have developed computational enhancement techniques
for mCEUS tailored to address the unique challenges of imaging contrast
accumulation in humans. These techniques utilize dynamic analysis to
distinguish molecularly bound contrast agent from other contrast-mode signal
sources, enabling analysis of contrast agent accumulation to be performed
during contrast bolus arrival when the signal due to molecular binding is
strongest.
  Applied to the 18 human patient examinations of the first-in-human molecular
ultrasound breast lesion study, computational enhancement improved the ability
to differentiate between pathology-proven lesion and pathology-proven normal
tissue in real-world human examination conditions that involved both patient
and probe motion, with improvements in contrast ratio between lesion and normal
tissue that in most cases exceed an order of magnitude (10x). Notably,
computational enhancement eliminated a false positive result in which tissue
leakage signal was misinterpreted by radiologists to be contrast agent
accumulation.
