Computer‐Aided Evaluation of Blood Vessel Geometry From Acoustic Images

A method for computer‐aided assessment of blood vessel geometries based on shape‐fitting algorithms from metric vision was evaluated. Acoustic images of cross sections of the radial artery and cephalic vein were acquired, and medical practitioners used a computer application to measure the wall thickness and nominal diameter of these blood vessels with a caliper method and the shape‐fitting method. The methods performed equally well for wall thickness measurements. The shape‐fitting method was preferable for measuring the diameter, since it reduced systematic errors by up to 63% in the case of the cephalic vein because of its eccentricity.