Ultrasound Department II

The Second Ultrasound Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University is located at the Lianhe Road Campus and was officially established in November 2011. The department has an independent ultrasound outpatient clinic, three ultrasound examination rooms for outpatients and three examination rooms for inpatients, and a total of 10 digital high-definition color ultrasound diagnostic systems. It has 2 chief physicians, 7 attending physicians and 4 resident physicians, including 3 doctors and 10 master's degree holders. The department is mainly responsible for ultrasound diagnosis and ultrasound-guided interventional treatment for inpatients and outpatients at the Lianhe Road Campus and patients of the Thyroid Disease Diagnosis and Treatment Center. Its specialties include multimodal tumor diagnosis and ultrasound-guided minimally invasive interventional diagnosis and treatment.

The Second Ultrasound Department has long been committed to ultrasound-guided interventional diagnosis and treatment of diseases, especially tumors. It has accumulated extensive experience in ultrasound intervention and established a sizeable intervention team with comprehensive diagnostic and treatment procedures and systems. The department has published more than 40 articles in SCI, Chinese medical and core journals, led 7 research projects at the provincial level or above, and participated in or organized more than 10 multicenter studies. Some ultrasound interventional treatment techniques rank among the leading technologies nationwide and are first in Northeast China. More than 40 physicians from across the country have received further training in ultrasound interventional diagnosis and treatment, and more than 30 master's and doctoral researchers have been trained.

The department provides specialized ultrasound diagnosis and treatment:

Screening and multimodal diagnosis of thyroid and breast lesions: Our department has an experienced thyroid and breast ultrasound diagnosis and treatment team. In addition to two-dimensional gray-scale ultrasound, it uses color Doppler ultrasound, microvascular flow imaging, elastography, contrast-enhanced ultrasound, three-dimensional ultrasound imaging, and pathological and genetic monitoring diagnosis obtained through needle biopsy to clarify the nature of lesions.

Contrast-enhanced ultrasound: Contrast-enhanced ultrasound is called the third revolution in ultrasound imaging after two-dimensional and Doppler ultrasound. An ultrasound contrast agent is injected intravenously, and microbubbles and harmonic imaging technology are used to dynamically observe, in real time, information on microcirculation and microvascular perfusion in organs, tissues and lesions. It is true functional ultrasound imaging. Contrast-enhanced ultrasound using sulfur hexafluoride microbubbles is a suspension of microbubbles whose average diameter is comparable to that of human red blood cells. All components are non-toxic and contain no iodine; they are eliminated through the lungs, with no hepatic, renal or cardiac toxicity. Adverse reactions are extremely rare, and allergy testing or liver and kidney function testing is unnecessary before use. Contrast-enhanced ultrasound can provide more information than two-dimensional ultrasound images, assist in distinguishing cystic from solid lesions, differentiating benign from malignant solid tumors, guiding biopsy-site selection and evaluating the vulnerability of carotid plaques.

Elastography: The elasticity, or hardness, of biological tissues is closely related to the biological characteristics of lesions and is an important reference for disease diagnosis. Ultrasound elastography is a noninvasive imaging method that evaluates tissue stiffness in a region of interest in real time. It represents the fourth leap in ultrasound technology after gray-scale ultrasound (B ultrasound), color Doppler ultrasound (C ultrasound) and spectral Doppler ultrasound (D ultrasound): ultrasound elastography (E ultrasound). It mainly includes real-time strain elastography, acoustic-radiation-force impulse imaging and shear-wave imaging. Elastography is simple to perform and reproducible, and its elasticity values are objective and accurate. It provides meaningful ultrasound data for clinical diagnosis and is now widely used in the diagnosis and differential diagnosis of thyroid, breast and liver diseases, showing good diagnostic performance.

Ultrasound diagnosis of musculoskeletal diseases: Musculoskeletal ultrasound is an emerging ultrasound examination technique. It uses high-frequency ultrasound to diagnose diseases of the musculoskeletal system and clearly displays superficial soft-tissue structures such as muscles, tendons, ligaments and peripheral nerves, as well as abnormalities caused by inflammation, tumors, injury or deformity. Accurate ultrasound diagnoses can be made in combination with the medical history and clinical symptoms. High-frequency ultrasound can finely distinguish the anatomy of muscles and superficial nerves in soft-tissue lesions, and in some cases is comparable to MRI. It can be used for lesions of the joints, muscles and soft tissues, including tendon rupture, muscle tears, chronic overuse injuries, peripheral neuritis, rheumatoid arthritis and gout.

Andrology examinations: Our department performs a series of diagnostic examinations for andrological diseases and works closely with the hospital's urology and andrology department. Examinations include penile diseases such as Peyronie's disease, penile curvature, penile masses and penile rupture; testicular and epididymal diseases such as cryptorchidism, abnormal testicular development, testicular masses, epididymal inflammation and epididymal agenesis; and diseases of the vas deferens and seminal vesicles such as seminal-vesicle inflammation, seminal-vesicle stones, vas deferens obstruction and congenital absence of the seminal vesicles or vas deferens.

Three-dimensional ultrasound technology: After two-dimensional ultrasound images are acquired, a computer reconstructs three-dimensional images, realistically displaying the three-dimensional anatomical structures of human organs on the screen. Ultrasound physicians can easily translate, rotate and section the reconstructed images, gaining a fuller understanding of the three-dimensional image information and structural relationships of lesions and surrounding tissues, making accurate diagnoses and formulating appropriate surgical plans to improve the accuracy and scientific basis of diagnosis and treatment. Three-dimensional ultrasound is now widely used in obstetrics and gynecology, cardiac, vascular, abdominal and breast disease examinations. In cervical vascular applications, three-dimensional reconstruction of the carotid artery using color Doppler flow can show the degree of carotid atherosclerosis in detail, including plaque texture and location and carotid stenosis, helping clinical assessment of atherosclerosis. Dynamic three-dimensional contrast-enhanced ultrasound can generate a series of consecutive three-dimensional images during contrast enhancement, display the three-dimensional shape of blood vessels in real time, and show blood-flow perfusion, vascular spatial structure and course. In abdominal-organ diagnosis, three-dimensional ultrasound clearly shows the course of organ vessels, lesion location and morphology, and spatial relationships with surrounding tissues. In breast diagnosis, it displays coronal ultrasound images and provides three-dimensional information on tumors, including their dimensions, morphology and changes in surrounding structures.