Harmonic Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound (CEUS) of Kidney Tumors

Nowadays, kidney tumor diagnosis benefits from large and highly accurate imagistic methods. A new imagistic method is contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) that accurately depicts the circulatory pattern of tumors. In kidney pathology, any mass or even capsular deformation depicted by B mode ultrasound represents an indication for CEUS. The kidney is completely and uniformly vascularized. In cystic tumors, there is a lack of contrast loading. In “impure” cystic masses (Bosnian 3 and 4), CEUS reveals vascularized septa and walls. In malignant tumors, accelerated and heterogeneous loading of contrast agent is observed in arterial phase followed by early, inhomogeneous washout of the contrast agent compared to normal renal parenchyma. In the abscesses, the appearance is the early loading of the walls associated with moderate hyperemia of the normal circulatory bed. This chapter details the CEUS in kidney tumor pathology, emphasizing the accurate information for the circulatory pattern of renal masses. It requires correlations with clinical data and information provided by other imaging explorations to make a final diagnosis.