Objective:

To investigate blood flow characteristics and the value of superb microvascular imaging (SMI) in the differential diagnosis of gallbladder lesions.

Methods:

A total of 71 patients with gallbladder lesions were subjected to color Doppler flow imaging (CDFI) and SMI. According to the Adler classification method

the differences in blood flow classification between CDFI and SMI in gallbladder lesions were compared. And then the blood flow morphology differences of SMI in different pathological types of gallbladder lesions were analyzed.

Results:

Among 71 cases of gallbladder lesions

56 lesions with blood flow were detected by SMI (78.87%) while 32 were detected by CDFI (45.07%). SMI was significantly better than CDFI in detecting the presence of blood flow in gallbladder lesions (

2

=17.21

P

＜0.05). SMI was superior in displaying grade Ⅱ and Ⅲ blood flow in benign and malignant gallbladder lesions (

2

=5.430

P

＜0.05). SMI also showed that the most common blood flow morphology of malignant gallbladder lesions was irregular

while the benign lesions mostly presented with punctate or branched patterns. The blood flow morphology was significantly different between lesion types (

2

=20.16

P

＜0.05).

Conclusion:

SMI provides more detailed vascular information for gallbladder lesions than CDFI and may improve the diagnostic efficiency for gallbladder lesions. Moreover

SMI is an effective method to distinguish malignant and benign lesions.