Usefulness of contrast-enhanced wide-band Doppler ultrasonograpy to diagnose alveolar echinococcosis of the liver and evaluate the effect of the treatment.

Alveolar echinococcosis is a rare parasitic disease caused by Echinococcus multicularis and most commonly involves the liver. Early diagnosis and accurate evaluation of the effect of the treatment are essential to improve the prognosis of patients with alveolar echinococcosis of the liver (AEL). The aim of this study was to demonstrate the characteristic imaging of AEL by contrast-enhanced Dynamic Flow (CE-DF) employing a wide-band Doppler technique for the diagnosis and the accurate evaluation of the effect of the treatment. Four patients with five AEL lesions before treatment or during medication were examined by CE-DF. All of the five AEL lesions examined by CE-DF revealed a defect with an irregular and distinct margin like a worm-eaten defect appearance, which was never observed on other hepatic lesions, in liver perfusion image during post-vascular phase. In addition, CE-DF made it possible to measure the size of AEL lesions accurately because the margin was detected distinctly. These data suggest that CE-DF is clinically useful for the diagnosis of AEL and the evaluation of the effect of the treatment.