Carotid duplex ultrasonography for neurosurgeons

Carotid duplex ultrasonography (CDU) is one of the most well-known imaging methods for arteriosclerosis and ischemic stroke. For neurosurgeons, it is very important for the details of carotid plaque to be thoroughly investigated by CDU. Symptomatic carotid plaque is very fragile and easily changes morphologically, and so requires frequent CDU examination. Furthermore, after carotid endarterectomy (CEA) and carotid artery stenting (CAS), restenosis is evaluated with CDU. CDU facilitates not only morphological imaging in the B mode, but also allows a flow study with color Doppler and duplex imaging. So, CDU can help assess the presence of proximal and intracranial artery lesions in spite of only having a cervical view, and the patency of the extracranial artery to intracranial artery bypass is revealed with CDU, which shows a rich velocity and low pulsatility index (PI) in duplex imaging. For the examiner, it is necessary to ponder on what duplex imaging means in examinations, and to summarize all imaging finding.