The final article in this ‘mini series’ is going to look at the role veterinary ultrasound can play with respect to the chicken, a member of the veterinary species that is often overlooked. Traditionally considered as farm animals, chickens are now also frequently becoming adopted as ‘household pets’ – there are even several websites devoted to this subject!

This article is going to discuss the findings of a research paper by Barua, A. et al. published in 2007 by the ‘American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine’ (Issue 26, pp 909-919). This paper was determining whether ultrasound imaging was an appropriate method for determining the presence of early ovarian tumours that are indicative of ovarian cancer. The outcome of this research can be considered as having two main purposes: firstly, these results will be directly applicable to detecting ovarian cancer for the benefit of the chickens themselves (particularly important for farmers and breeders), and secondly, chickens acting as an animal model for similar cancers that occur in humans. Most importantly, chickens are the only animals that can acquire ovarian cancer in a manner that is akin to humans (due to their spontaneous development of this condition). Although I adopt the terminology of ‘chicken’ throughout this article the term ‘laying hen’ was used in the original paper, representative of a female chicken that would therefore possess ovaries.

These studies directly compared ultrasound images with the anatomical and histological characteristics associated with the ovaries. The results revealed that ultrasound imaging possessed the ability to identify the presence of tumours on the ovaries of the chickens, similar to that which was seen both anatomically and histologically. Furthermore, this study revealed that tumours present in the ovary had an increase in blood flow due to the observation that ovarian tumours had reduced resistive and pulsatility values relative to regular ovaries. Blood flow is most easily observed and measured using a scanner with Doppler capabilities.

A great advantage of using ultrasound imaging is that aside from the painless nature of ultrasonography, the chickens were able to be assessed on numerous occasions, allowing any changes that may be indicative of ovarian cancer to be determined. This is vitally important as researchers are able to track the development of early stage ovarian cancer using ultrasound imaging, as opposed to only being able to view a ‘one-off snapshot’ of this condition which may be the case using other methods of detection. Consequently the wide-reaching implications of this study suggest that veterinary ultrasound can be considered as a method by which to detect and diagnose early ovarian cancer in chickens.