The Department of Ultrasound and Electrocardiogram has been founded for more than 30 years. It is a national center for contrast-enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS) training, the medical ultrasound clinical research base of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and South China University of Technology, and a training base for medical students and residents programs of ultrasound. We have 48 staff members in the department, including 36 doctors (4 professors and 6 associate professors), 3 doctoral supervisors, 8 master supervisors, 6 nurses and 6 technicians. There are 22 ultrasound examination rooms at Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center’s (SYSUCC) Yuexiu campus (16 in the hospital's headquarters and 6 in the Health Examination Centers), 3 intervention operation rooms, and 4 electrocardiogram rooms. We undertake ultrasound examination, interventional diagnosis and treatment and electrocardiogram of the center. About 1,000 ultrasound examinations and 50 interventional procedures are performed daily.
At SYSUCC, our department focuses on oncology. Our service principle is the patient first and the best quality. In recent years, the coincidence rate of conventional ultrasound diagnosis has exceeded 95%. The sub-specialties are fully set up, including ultrasound of the abdomen, gynecology, heart, blood vessels and superficial organs. Professional and expert outpatient clinics are open for consultation of complicated cases and patient follow-ups. We have vast experience in the research of lymphatic diseases, hepatic tumors, breast tumors, thyroid tumors, GI tumors, urinary and reproductive tumors.
Our department is one of the earliest centers in China in which CEUS has been successfully applied to conduct clinical examinations since 2004. More than 24,000 CEUS examinations have been performed so far, making it a national center for CEUS training. Interventional ultrasonography is another feature of our department. We carry out various interventional procedures such as ultrasound-guided superficial and deep tumor biopsy, catheter drainage of hydrothorax and ascites, percutaneous transhepatic cholangial drainage, sclerosis therapy of cysts, and ablation treatment of thyroid tumor. We have also set up day-care unit for ultrasound interventional procedures to benefit the more patients since 2018.
The department undertakes teaching work for medical students, visiting fellows and resident doctors. We now have 3 doctoral supervisors, 8 master supervisors, 3 PhD students and 13 postgraduate students. We take an active part in academic communications and promotion by holding national academic conferences and national-level continuous education classes. We have conducted lots of work to support primary hospitals such as promoting the standardized application of ultrasound medicine and carrying out CEUS and interventional ultrasonography. We also advocate and engage in international exchange and cooperation. Seven doctors have studied or studied for a doctorate in the United States, Britain, Germany and other countries.
The department is committed to the basic and clinical research of ultrasound and its new technology for cancer diagnosis and treatment. We have done a number of research on CEUS of hepatic tumors. Among them, the study of differential diagnosis between hepatocellular carcinoma and cholangiocarcinoma was cited by the 2016 CEUS LI-RADS guidelines of the American Society of Radiology. The department is in charge of many projects including National Natural Science Foundation projects and the National Key Program “Digital Diagnostic Equipment” projects. We have published more than 40 SCI articles in the past five years, including 5 publications with an impact factors >5. Nine studies were selected for oral presentation at the Radiological Society of North America Congress (RSNA), and seven studies were selected for oral presentation at the World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology Congress (WFUMB).
The department has established a long-term and stable cooperative relationship with the Translational Molecular Imaging Laboratory of Stanford University and several collaborative research projects are undergoing. Recently, keeping up with the cutting-edge research in imaging medicine, we have been exploring the application of artificial intelligence in ultrasound imaging. Currently, we are collaborating with Fudan University School of Information Science and Engineering, the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology Chinese Academy of Science and Shenzhen’s University School of Biomedical Engineering to carry out several multidisciplinary studies on medical engineering.
