Evaluation of Different Ultrasound Equipments in Detection of Power Doppler Signal in the Equine Suspensory Ligament Branches

Abstract

As in human medicine, the usefulness of Power Doppler (PD) ultrasonography has been suggested in the evaluation of tendinopathy in horses. However, detection of the PD flow is equipment dependent and a large variability of newer or older ultrasound machines are used in veterinary medicine. The aim of this study was to quantitatively compare the performances of different ultrasound equipments in the detection of PD signal in branches of equine suspensory ligament, especially to detect very slow flows. Our hypothesis was that there is a significant difference between ultrasound machines in their ability to detect slow flow PD signal. Thirty-six suspensory ligament branches of 5 horses were used for this study. The PD ultrasonographic (US) examination was performed for all suspensory ligament branches using three ultrasound machines. The areas of PD signal present in theUS images were measured using dedicated image analysis software. The PD performances of the three ultrasound devices were compared using quantitative image analysis and statistics tests (non-parametric, Global Linear Model and post-hoc tests with Least Square Means).A significant difference in the detection the smallest PD flow signal between one and the other two ultrasound equipments was found (P-values less than 0,05).This study indicates the importance of the ultrasound equipment for the PD US examination and the need of considering ultrasound machine performance while interpreting any PD US result on equine suspensory branches.