Summary
In vascular pathology the assessment of disease severity and monitoring of treatment requires quantitative and reproducible measurements of arterial blood flow. We have developed a new technique for processing sequences of dynamic digital X-ray angiographic images. We have tested it using computer simulated angiographic data which includes the effect of pulsatile blood flow and X-ray quantum noise. A parametric image was formed in which the image grey-level represents dye concentration as a function of time and distance along a vessel segment. Adjacent concentration — distance profiles in the parametric image were re-registered along the vessel axis until a match occurred. A match was defined as the point where the sum of squares of the differences in the two profiles was a minimum. The distance translated per frame interval is equal to the bolus velocity. We have tested several contrast medium injection methods including constant flow and a range of discrete pulses per second. The technique proved to be robust and independent of injection technique. Average blood flow was measured for simulated pulsatile waveforms with mean flows of up to 650 ml/min (peak velocities up to 186 cm/s) in a range of diameters from 2 mm to 6 mm. The standard deviation of the error in the mean flow estimates over the whole range of velocities and vessel sizes was ±1.4 cm/s.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Richardson PDI, Withrington PG (1981) Liver blood flow. I. Intrinsic and nervous control of liver blood flow. Gastroenterology 81: 159–173
Wyatt DG (1984) Review: Blood flow velocity measurement in vivo by electromagnetic induction. Med Biol Eng Comput 22: 193–211
O'Sullivan VT (1982) Effect of blood vessels on electromagnetic flowmeter sensitivity. Phys Med Biol 27: 277–284
Nimura Y, Mastsuo H, Hayashi T, Kitabatake A, Mochizuki S, Sakakibara H, Kato K, Abe H (1974) Studies on arterial flow patterns — instantaneous velocity spectrums and their phasic changes — with directional ultrasonic Doppler technique. Br Heart J 36: 899–907
Johnston KW, Maruzzo BC, Cobbold RSC (1978) Doppler methods for quantitative measurement and localization of peripheral arterial occlusion diseases by analysis of the blood flow velocity waveforms. Ultrasound Med Biol 4: 209–223
Marquis C, Meister JJ, Mooser E, Mosimann R (1986) Quantitative pulsed Doppler measurement of common femoral artery blood flow variables during postocclusive reactive hyperemia. J Clin Ultrasound 14: 165–170
Light H, Cross G (1972) Cardiovascular data by transcutaneous aortovelography. In: Roberts C, Strandness DE (eds) Blood flow measurement. Sector Publishing Limited, London
Sequeira RF, Light LH, Cross G, Raftery EB (1976) Transcutaneous aortovelography, A quantitative evaluation. Br Heart J 38: 443–450
Taylor KJW (1985) Blood flow in deep abdominal and pelvic vessels: Ultrasonic pulsed Doppler analysis. Radiology 154: 487–493
Burns PN (1987) The physical principles of doppler and spectral analysis. J Clin Ultrasound 15: 567–590
van Merode T, Hick P, Hoeks APG, Reneman RS (1983) Limitations of Doppler spectral broadening in the early detection of carotid artery disease due to the size of the sample volume. Ultrasound Med Biol 9: 581–586
Shimizu K, Matsuda T, Sakurai T, Fujita A, Ohara H, Okamura S, Hashimoto S, Mano H, Kawai C, Kiri M (1986) Visualization of moving fluid: Quantitative analysis of blood flow velocity using MR imaging. Radiology 159: 195–199
Ridgway JP, Turnbull LW, Smith MA (1987) Demonstration of pulsatile cerebrospinal-fluid flow using magnetic resonance phase imaging. Br J Radiol 60: 423–427
West DJ, Tarnawski M, Graves MJ, Taylor MG, Padayachee TS, Ayton VT, Smith MA (1988) Blood flow imaging by magnetic resonance. Medicamundi 33: 101–111
Nordenstrom B, Grim S (1965) A method for determination of blood flow with use of roentgen contrast medium. Radiology 84: 644–655
Rutishauser W, Simon H, Stucky JP, Schad N, Noseda G, Wellauer J (1967) Evaluation of roentgen cinedensitometry for flow measurement in models and in the intact circulation. Circulation 36: 951–958
Silverman NR, Rosen L (1977) Arterial blood flow measurement: Assessment of velocity estimate methods. Invest Radiol 12: 319–324
Heintzen PH (1978) Review of research into and some aspects of the modern development of densitometry, particularly roentgen-video-computer techniques. Ann Radiol (Paris) 21: 343–348
Kedem D, Kedem D, Smith CW, Dean RH, Brill AB (1978) Velocity Distribution and blood flow meastrements using videodensitometric methods. Invest Radiol 13(1): 46–56
Bürsch J, Hahne HJ, Brennecke R, Grönemeier D, Heintzen PH (1981) Assessment of arterial blood flow measurements by digital angiography. Radiology 141: 39–47
Forbes G (1984) Quantitative blood flow anlysis with digital technique. In: Harrison RM, Isherwood I (eds) Digital radiology — physical and clinical aspects. IPSM Publishing, London, pp 137–145
Colchester ACF (1985) The effect of changing PaCo2 on cerebral artery calibre estimated by a new technique of dynamic quantitative digital angiography. PhD Thesis, University of London, pp 136–142
Hawkes DJ, Colchester ACE, Brunt JNH, Wicks DAG, du Boulay GH, Wallis A (1988) Development of a model to predict the potential accuracy of vessel blood flow measurements from dynamic angiographic recordings. In: Viergever MA, Todd-Pokropek A (eds) Mathematics and computer science in medical imaging. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York, pp 469–478
du Boulay GH, Brunt J, Colchester A, Hawkes D, Wallis A, Wicks D (1987) Volume flow measurement of pulsatile flow by digitised cine angiography. Acta Radiol [Suppl] XIII: Symposium Neuroradiologicum 59–62
Colchester ACF, Hawkes DJ, Brunt JNH, du Boulay GH, Wallis A (1986) Pulsatile blood flow measurements with the aid of 3-D reconstruction from dynamic angiographic records. In: Bacharach SL (ed) Information processing in medical imaging. Nijhoff, Dordrecht, pp 247–265
Swanson DK, Myerowitz PD, Hegge JO, Watson KM (1986) Arterial blood-flow waveform measurement in intact animals: New digital radiographic technique. Radiology 161: 323–328
Hawkes DJ, Colchester ACF de Belder MA, Norbury RN, Camm AJ, Davies MJ (1988) The measurement of absolute lumen cross sectional area and lumen geometry in quantitative angiography. In: Todd-Pokropek A, Viergever MA (eds) The formation, handling and evaluation of medical images. Proceedings of NATO ASI (Portugal), September 1988
Bürsch JH, Hahne HJ, Brennecke R, Hetzer R, Heintzen PH (1979) Functional-angiograms derived from densitometric analysis of digitized x-ray picture series. Biomed Engineering (Berlin) [Suppl] 24: 189–190
Kruger RA, Bateman W, Liu PY, Nelson JA (1983) Blood flow determination using recursive processing: a digital radiographic method. Radiology 149: 293–298
Thompson HK, Starmer CF, Whalen RE, McIntosh HD (1964) Indicator transit time considered as a gamma variate. Circ Res 14: 502–515
Starmer CF, Clark DO (1970) Computer computations of cardiac output using gamma function. J Appl Physiol 28: 219–220
Burbank FH (1983) Determinants of contrast enhancement for intravenous digital subtraction angiography. Invest Radiol 18: 306–316
Harpen MD, Lecklitner ML (1984) Derivation of gamma varite indicator dilution function from simple convection dispersion model of blood flow. Med Phys 11:690–692
Forbes GS, Earnest F, Kinspert DB, Folger WN, Sundt TM (1982) “Digital angiography”: Introducing digital techniques to clinical cerebral angiography practice. Mayo Clin Proc 57: 673–693
Womersley JR (1955) Method for the calculation of velocity, rate of flow and viscous drag in arteries when the pressure gradient is known. J Physiol 127: 553–563
Lamb H (1932) Hydrodynamics, 5th edn (reprinted 1953). University Press, Cambridge
Link DP, Lantz BMT, Foerster JM, Holcroft JW, Reid MH (1979) New videodensitometric method for measuring renal artery blood flow at routine arteriography: Validation in the canine model. Invest Radiol 14: 465–470
Bland JM, Altman DG (1986) Statistical methods for assessing agreement between two methods of clinical measurement. Lancet 1: 307–310
McDonald DA (1974) Blood flow in arteries, 2nd edn. Edward Arnold, London, p 130
Bogaard JM, van Duyl WA, Versprill A, Wise ME (1985) Influence of random noise on the accuracy of the indicator-dilution method. Clin Phys Physiol Meas 6: 59–64
Wicks DA, Brunt JN, Colchester ACF, du Boulay GH, Hawkes DJ, Wallis A (1986) A quantitative cineangiographic technique to estimate blood flow in identified vessels. Proc 26th Annual Conference Biological Engineering Society, Abstract, p 60
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Seifalian, A.M., Hawkes, D.J., Colchester, A.C.F. et al. A new algorithm for deriving pulsatile blood flow waveforms tested using simulated dynamic angiographic data. Neuroradiology 31, 263–269 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00344356
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00344356