Fig. 3.
Vascular changes during therapy in patients with non-pCR vs. pCR. A Analysis of ULM data acquired right before the first, second, and fourth NAC cycle. B ULM occurrence maps of primary tumours (outlined in yellow) during therapy (top to bottom) overlaid on B-mode reference frames. Representative images are shown both for patients with non-pCR (left) and pCR (right). Scale bars: 5 mm. C Compensated vessel coverage during therapy (nnon-pCR = 11 or 12∗, npCR = 7 or 8∗), shown as boxplots with median and IQR. Next to the overall trend (left), the relative change (middle) and absolute change (right) between measurements are shown. p-values were determined via a two-sided Wilcoxon rank sum test. D Table showing the number of ULM features with significant differences (nominal p < 0.05) or high effect size (|Hedges' g|>0.8) between patients with non-pCR (nnon-pCR = 11 or 12∗) and pCR (npCR = 7 or 8∗), across time points and during therapy (delta radiomics). Statistical significance was determined via a two-sided Wilcoxon rank sum test. ∗Patients 16 and 18 showed no perfused vessels within the tumour during the first and third measurement, respectively, preventing the computation of some features. Icons were created using BioRender.