APPARATUS FOR IN VIVO MONITORING OF THE EFFECT OF ANTIANGIOGENIC DRUGS ON CANCERS

摘要

The invention here described relates to monitoring the effect of angiogenesis inhibiting drugs used to treat cancer in breast and testicular tissues. A probe combining electromagnetic radiation in the red and infra-red part of the spectrum is physically combined with a series of Ultrasound Doppler transducers arranged to monitor blood flow over one hemisphere of the tumour. This arrangement overcomes the major difficulty with conventional Doppler blood flow probes that the signals vary more from area to area of the cancer than the changes induced by the drugs acting on the neovascularisation over short time intervals. The invention envisages using probes with transducers of different frequencies and where the piezoelements are angled to cover such an area of angiogenesis that inhomogeneities become insignificant, by virtue of the fact that signals from all the vessels in a hemispherical volume of the tumour's advancing front are collected and processed electronically to produce the observed spectra.