THREE-DIMENSIONAL ULTRASOUND IN GYNECOLOGIC ONCOLOGY

Abstract

Background. Although three-dimensional ultrasound (3D US) imaging has been used for a decade, debate continues about its potential clinical aplications in gynecology. The same is true for the field of gynecologic oncology. Also, reports regarding usfulness of 3D US in gynecologic oncology are limited. A few potentially useful clinical applications have been described and some of these are now gaining general acceptance. In this paper, the usfulness of 3D US in the main areas of its application is demonstrated: diagnostics of cervical, endometrial, ovarian and breast cancer.Conclusions. An important advantage of 3D US over conventional two-dimensional imaging is the ability to reconstruct and display any arbitrarily chosen section within the volume dataset as well as ability to measure the volume of pelvic organs regardless of their shape. 3D US also allows the realtime analysis of the acquired image data to be conducted at a later time when the patient is off the examination table.

Keywords

• sonography
• three-dimensional
• gynecologic oncology