Contrast-enhanced ultrasound characteristics of choroidal hemangioma

Background Choroidal hemangioma is a common benign intraocular tumor.Typical choroidal hemangioma is comparably easy to diagnose, but untypical one might be misdiagnosed as malignant tumor.Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) has been used to diagnose multiple neoplasm for the past few years.However, the application of CEUSin ophthalmology is less. Objective This study was to investigate the CEUS characteristics of choroidal hemangioma. Methods Fifty-eight eyes of 58 patients who were diagnosed as choroidal hemangioma were included in Beijing Tongren Hospital during July 2010 to December 2012.CEUS was performed on the patients to check the manifestations of choroidal hemangioma.A time-intensity analysis was employed to quantitatively analyzed and compared the maximum intensity (MI), rising time (RT), time to peak (TTP), and mean transit time (mTT) between the choroidal hemangioma and normal orbital tissue and the parameters were contrasted using Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Results CEUS showed that choroidal hemangioma was gradually enhanced by the contrast after intravenous injection of sulphur hexafluoride microbubbles with a high-reference signal in choroidal hemangioma, and the fading procedure was slower in choroidal hemangioma than that of normal orbital tissue.MI, RT, TTP, and mTT were 294.20% (217.35%, 373.25%), 21.30 (17.35, 23.35) s, 25.00 (21.68, 27.48) s and 59.30 (51.08, 78.35) s in the choroidal hemangioma, which were significantly higher than 100.00% (100.00%, 100.00%), 17.75 (15.00, 20.30) s, 22.40 (18.35, 24.63) s and 47.25 (40.90, 57.23) s in the normal orbital tissue (Z=-6.608, -4.998, -4.650, -4.332, all at P<0.001). Conclusions Choroidal hemangioma has its own CEUS manifestation characteristics. CEUS is helpful to the differential diagnosis of choroidal hemangioma. Key words: Choroid; Choroidal neoplasm/diagnosis; Hemangioma/diagnosis; Contrast-enhanced ultrasound