The use of color Doppler imaging for prenatal diagnosis of umbilical cord anomalies: report of three cases.

Color Doppler imaging could easily and rapidly detect the absence of an umbilical artery, despite the presence of oligohydramnios in one case and multiple cord loops involving a normal cord in the other case. In the third case, which on gray-scale imaging appeared as an indeterminate cystic structure of the cord, color Doppler imaging demonstrated a complex abnormal vascular pattern suggestive of an angiomyxoma.