POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITS IN THE IMAGING O F EXTRACRANIAL VESSELS WITHCONVENTIONAL ULTRASONOGRAPHY

Background For the extracranial and partial intracranial diagnosis of vessels Doppler ultrasonography has been the method of choice since a long time. If not the phenomenon of flow, but anatomical structures ar e of interest, or biopsy is planned, the conventional ultrasonography is often underestimated. Patients and methods A detection of the super ficial temporal artery and its branches was performed in a clinical st udy of 50 patients by using a 10 Mhz ultrasonic system. The ultrasonic findings were correlated with clinical findings.Results The vessel co urse, the vessel was detectable diameter, plaques and stenosis and the perivascular tissue. Conclusions The availability of conventional ult rasonic tools provides the possibility to achieve a fast first documen tation of the extracranial vessels in a lot of inflammatory and arteri osclerotic diseases.