Background: The diagnosis of feline pancreatic disease is difficult, because clinical abnormalities and routine noninvasive diagnostic tests are unreliable.Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate by Doppler ultrasonography if vascularity and blood volume differs in the otherwise ultrasonographically normal and diseased feline pancreas.Animals: Thirty-six client owned cats. Methods: The pancreas was examined with B-mode and contrast-enhanced color and power Doppler ultrasonography. Doppler images were analyzed with a computer program: parameter fractional area represents a vascularity index and colorweighted fractional area assesses blood volume.Results: Based on the B-mode findings, the pancreas was considered normal in 11 clinically healthy cats and diseased in 25 cats of which 4 were clinically healthy and 21 had clinical signs consistent with pancreatic disease. Histologic or cytologic samples were taken in all diseased pancreata. Fifteen samples were of diagnostic quality: purulent or mixed cellular inflammation (8), nodular hyperplasia (4), and neoplasia (3) were identified. Vascularity and blood volume for all Doppler methods was significantly higher in cats with pancreatic disease. Significantly higher Doppler values were detected with power Doppler than with color Doppler, and with postcontrast color and power Doppler than with precontrast Doppler technologies.Conclusion: Contrast-enhanced Doppler ultrasonography appears feasible in the feline pancreas. Significant differences were found between normal cats and those with evidence of pancreatic pathology. Further studies are needed to evaluate its use for the differentiation of pancreatic disorders and in cats suspected to have pancreatic disease but without B-mode ultrasonographic changes of the pancreas.

Power Doppler ultrasonography represents a non-invasive modality to successfully monitor the vascular effects and thus, treatment efficacy, of PDT.

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Conventionally, tumour vascularity is assessed invasively by immunofluorescent analysis. Quantified contrast-enhanced power Doppler ultrasound has been used to measure tumour angiogenesis non-invasively in humans and experimental animals. The purpose of this study was to correlate quantified contrast-enhanced power Doppler ultrasound with immunofluorescent results in 45 spontaneous canine tumours. With power Doppler, mean vascularity was high in squamous cell carcinomas, moderate in malignant oral melanomas and low in sarcomas. There was high mean vascularity in squamous cell carcinomas and low mean vascularity in sarcomas and malignant oral melanomas. Although Doppler parameters correlated moderately with microvascular density for all tumours (P = 0.004, r = 0.4), they did not correlate within histology groups. These analyses show that vascularity differs among canine tumour histology groups. However, dependent on the method used, measurement of tumour vascularity can provide different biological information.

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