Obtenção de imagens bi e tridimensionais de biomicroscopia ultrassônica endoluminal do cólon de camundongos para determinação de espessamento de parede e de volume tumoral

Abstract

Colon cancer is the third most common cancer for men and the second most common in women. Despite the high incidence and high mortality rate, most of the deaths can be prevented by techniques for early detection. In this sense, it is important to conduct preclinical studies using animal models of colon diseases, which requires the implementation of instrumentation to support investigations. Therefore, the thesis proposal consists in implementing a technique to generate three dimensional endoluminal ultrasound biomicroscopic images (eUBM-3D), operating at 40 MHz, from a semi-automated segmentation of a region of interest. In order to generate eUBM-3D images, then a sequence of equally spaced (25 m) eUBM-2D images was acquired. The technique was tested, initially, with a phantom mimicking the colon of small animals and thereafter, in vivo, with 18 mice, muscullus/129SVJ/Tac, submitted to the AOM/DSS protocol. It was obtained a wall thickness global mean (SD) of 0.230 (0.023) mm e 0.336 (0.086) for normal and inflamed colon, respectively. The eUBM system estimated volumes in the range of 0.174 mm3 to 7.909 mm3 for the phantoms and 0.066 mm3 to 6.082 mm3 for mouse colon polypoid tumors.