Blood flow determinations utilizing digital densitometry.

A method of obtaining relative and absolute blood flow measurements from digital densitometry was evaluated with a simulated vessel phantom and a hydrodynamic model. A digital vascular imaging system capable of acquisition in 512(2) and 1024(2) mode was used. Relative and absolute blood flow were measured using parameters derived from the densitometric curve. Since application of densitometric data to absolute flow measurements requires the vessel diameter, an algorithm for vessel size determination was created. Gray scale changes were demonstrated to be linearly related to contrast concentration. The variance of vessel size determination was significantly different in all combinations of 1024(2) and 512(2) imaging with 15 cm or 35 cm field size. The error in vessel size determination was significantly less using the larger 1024(2) matrix and the smaller 15 cm image intensifier field size, as shown by the smaller variance. In relative flow determinations, there was good correlation between the flow and four parameters of the densitometric curve with no significant differences between 512(2) and 1024(2) imaging. Absolute flow determinations had slightly lower correlation to actual flow but were not significantly different from relative flow determinations. Relative and absolute blood flow determinations can be performed adequately with either 512(2) or 1024(2) imaging. The increased accuracy in vessel size determination with 1024(2) imaging makes this high resolution system potentially preferable to determine absolute blood flow.