The use of veterinary ultrasound as a means by which to expand our current knowledge in both the scientific and medical fields is very important. As the technological aspect of ultrasonography improves, so does the number of potential applications it can be used for. This week the phenomenon of ‘contrast-enhanced ultrasonography’ (CEUS) will be looked at, using the cat pancreas as an experimental model. As a technique, CEUS is able to help the researcher obtain increasingly reliable data that may not be possible when grey-scale images are taken (taken from the paper by Diana et al., details below).

The study is by Diana et al (Contrast-enhanced ultrasonography of the pancreas in healthy cats, BMC Veterinary Research, March 17th 2015, 11:64) and the full article can be accessed by clicking here. The 10 cats looked at were comprised of 4 breeds, both male and females ranging from 2 to 9 years old.  Importantly, each cat was considered healthy and a ‘real-time ultrasound’ scanner was used.

The results of this research revealed somewhat of a parallel between what was previously seen in dogs, showing a use for ultrasound in identifying cats anatomically. As has been discussed several times here at Vet Image Solutions, veterinary ultrasonography has the great advantage of bypassing the requirement for the animal in question to be rendered unconscious during examination. This study also touches on this particular aspect of ultrasound, noting that the cats were kept awake intentionally to aid in the accuracy of results yielded – made possible in part due to the intrinsic nature of ultrasonography.

In sum this paper has shown how veterinary ultrasonography, specifically CEUS, is a suitable technique in order to examine functional pancreatic tissue (the parenchyma) (Wikipedia) in our feline friends. Although this study was carried out using healthy subjects, future studies may benefit from extrapolating the data demonstrated and drawing comparisons to cats suffering from ill health. It should be noted that ill health here is relating to cats with conditions of the pancreas. If you are thinking of purchasing an ultrasound scanner specifically for use with cats, please take a look at what we can offer by clicking here. If you wish to learn more about contrast ultrasound and how it works, please read our article on microbubbles here.