QUANTIFICATION OF COLOR DOPPLER FOR THE EVALUATION OF TISSUE VASCULARIZATION

Assessment of tissue vascularization with color Doppler (CD) can impro ve differential diagnosis of tumors, Until now, measurement of flow ve locities is restricted to conventional duplex ultrasound of single ves sels or semiquantitative scoring of the vessel distribution in CD, We developed a new method for quantification of CD data in organs or tumo rs by statistical image analysis, Based on standardized image recordin g, data is acquired from the video output of any ultrasound scanner us ing a 24-bit color framegrabber in a personal computer, The digitized colors are recognized according to their position in the CD palette ba r resulting in an 8-bit color image (number of identified pixels > 99. 9%), Within the region of interest, statistics of the detected flow pa tterns are calculated, The color pixel density and the mean color valu e varies between recordings of the same image during subsequent systol ic peaks with a SD of 10% and 2%, respectively, and within different s ections of the same organ or tumor with 25% and 10-50%, This analysis can be used for comparative or longitudinal studies and an objective e valuation of CD in complex vascular formations such as tumors, Its dia gnostic impact has already been demonstrated in clinical studies.