Transvaginal color Doppler was used to assess circulation in pelvic vessels in a group of 64 patients including 15 patients with fertility problems, 18 patients with pelvic tumors, 2 cases of suspected ectopic pregnancy, and 29 pregnant patients with fetuses between 6 weeks and 10 weeks, menstrual age.
Blood flow was successfully displayed by color Doppler in the external and internal iliac arteries, and the uterine atreries, but flow in ovarian arteries could not be visualized.
In the subgroup of patients with pelvic tumors, neovascularization of tumor tissue was documented in 6 out of 10 cases of uterine fibroma and in 2 cases of ovarian cancer. In 6 cases involving benign ovarian pathology, no abnormal blood supply was observed. A comparison between the characteristics of blood flow within uterine fibromas and ovarian malignancies showed lower impedance and higher blood velocity in cases of malignancy.
In early pregnancy blood flow in the umbilical artery could be visualized by color Doppler starting from the 6th week and flow in the aorta from the 8th week. Flow in the trophoblasts was observed with an overall success rate of 59% and successfully demonstrated in 1 out of 2 cases of ectopic pregnancy. Indexing Words: Doppler color imaging * Color imaging Transvaginal imaging
The most exciting recent developments in the field of diagnostic ultrasonography in obstetric and gynecology are, undoubtedly, color Doppler and transvaginal sonography.1-6
Color Doppler, or more precisely color-encoded real-time two-dimensional Doppler, imaging systems display flow as multiple points in a two-dimensional plane superimposed on a two-dimensional ultrasound image. The technique is based mainly on the moving target identification principle, which is, in fact, an autocorrelation techn i q ~e . ~
A delay line is used to bring data from subsequent images to a multiplier and the rate at which analogous signals are digitized in the scan converter provides continuous information on flow velocity. In the majority of commercially available units, flow toward the transducer is encoded in red, and flow going away from the transducer is encoded in blue. Flow velocity is proportional to the color brightness. Turbulence