Diagnostic vascular ultrasonography with the help of color Doppler and contrast-enhanced ultrasonography

The use of ultrasonography and especially of contrast-enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS) in the diagnosis of vascular pathologies before and after interventions has significantly increased over the past years due to the broader availability of modern ultrasound systems with CEUS capabilities and more trained user experience in this imaging modality. For the preinterventional and postinterventional work-up of carotid diseases, duplex ultrasound as well as CEUS have been established as the standard-of-care examination procedures for diagnosis, evaluation, and follow-up. In addition to its use for carotid arterial diseases, ultrasonography has also become the primary modality for the screening of vascular pathologies. This review describes the most common pathologies found in ultrasonography of the carotid arteries, the abdominal aorta, and the femoral arteries.

Comparison of gradient echo and echo planar imaging measurements for the calculation of regional blood volume maps / 华中科技大学学报（医学）（英德文版）

The purpose of this study was to evaluate relative regional blood volume (rCBV) in meningioma and compare the utility of reconstruction using both gradient-echo sequence and echo-planar-imaging (EPI) sequence. Eighteen patients with meningiomas were studied on a Siemens 1.5-T scanner. During the gradient-echo sequence (n=12) and EPI sequence (n=6), a bolus (0.2 mmol/kg) of Gd-DTPA was injected mechanically with a flow rate of 5 ml/second. Image processing of dynamic data was performed on a pixel-by-pixel basis. The ratio of tumor rCBV/gray matter rCBV was 3.01 +/- 1.18 (3.07 +/- 1.39 in gradient sequence and 2.84 +/- 0.94 in EPI sequence). The ratio of gray matter/white matter as the reference tissue had a mean of 2.79 +/- 0.76 using the FLASH sequence, and a mean of 3.04 +/- 1.31 using EPI. These differences were not statistically signifcant (P>0.5, t-test). According to the ratio of tumor rCBV/gray matter rCBV, a mean value, 14.5 ml/100 g, of rCBV in meningiomas was calculated. Compared with gray matter, increased inhomogeneous rCBV was observed in meningioma. Based on the two different sequences, no bias can be observed in our rCBV reconstruction.