Diagnosis of urinary bladder diseases in dogs by using two-dimensional and three-dimensional ultrasonography

The objective of this study was to obtain and compare two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) ultrasonographic images of the urinary bladder in different disease conditions.

The present study was conducting on total 10clinical cases of the urinary bladder in dogs. The ultrasound (US) machine used for this study was 3D US machine (Nemio-XG: Toshiba, Japan) having a four-dimensional volumetric probe.

In the present study, the inflamed thickened wall was clearly visible with the distinction of different layers of the urinary bladder wall in some of the cases of cystitis using 2D ultrasonography. In 3D sonogram, the urinary bladder was visualized as a large anechoic structure with no distinction of different layers of the bladder wall. The cystoliths were clearly visible as hyperechoic structures with distal acoustic shadow in 2D sonogram and appeared as a bright echogenic area in 3D sonogram. In case of urinary bladder neoplasia in 2D ultrasonogram, the bladder lumen was found to be occluded with a large growth imaged as focal anechoic areas in the tissue of mixed echogenicity with small hyperechoic dots in this tissue parenchyma. In 3D ultrasonogram, a tissue of mixed echogenicity of pus was also observed.

From the present study it was concluded that 2D and 3D ultrasonography is very helpful for diagnosis of different clinical conditions of the urinary bladder such as cystitis, cystoliths, and urinary bladder neoplasia. The cavity of urinary bladder was more clearly visualized in 3D ultrasonography, but the distinction of different layers of the bladder wall was visualized only in 2D ultrasonography. The distinct shadow of pus and cystoliths were visible in 2D ultrasonogram. The visualization of pus in 3D ultrasonography was done for the first time in present study.