Possibility of modern ultrasound imaging of portal venous system

TL;DR

This paper reviews modern ultrasound techniques for assessing the portal venous system, highlighting their benefits and challenges.

Contribution

The paper provides a review of new digital vascular ultrasound methods for evaluating portal venous flow.

Findings

BMUS helps identify anatomical variants in portal venous vessels and hepatic veins.

CCDS and PD enable comprehensive hemodynamic assessments but struggle with low flow settings.

3D flow methods and CEUS offer improved assessment of portal venous flow changes.

Abstract

During the past few years, there have been a number of new technical developments in the field of high-performance ultrasound diagnostics, which should help us to better assess dynamic vascular changes with ultrasound. BMUS enables us to get important anatomical variants with regard to the portal venous vessels and the hepatic veins. With color-coded duplex sonography (CCDS), and power Doppler (PD), examiners can carry out a comprehensive hemodynamic assessment of the portal venous. However, low flow settings in the vein have always been a particular challenge for CCDS, since the examiner requires special experience and artefacts often occur. In this review article, we reviewed the technical basics and diagnostic possibilities of new digital vascular ultrasound methods, 3D flow methods and contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) in the assessment of portal venous flow changes.