Introduction to Vascular Imaging of the Head and Neck

This lecture is the first part of a capstone course we have for our 4th year medical students about how to approach vascular imaging of the head and neck, including angiography, CT angiography, MR angiography, and ultrasound. To see more about this course, check out the full vascular capstone page. It contains interactive cases that you can scroll on your own as well as some additional videos explaining them.

In this lecture, we have a special guest, Dr. Cynthia Wu, who is going to explain to us some of the general concepts behind vascular imaging of the head and neck, different techniques you can do to perform vascular imaging, and when you might order each type of study.

Basic concepts

In general, to see vessels better on imaging, we need to use some sort of contrast to differentiate the vessels from the surrounding tissues. For techniques like CT, we can use an injected contrast agent to see the vessels. For other techniques such as MR angiography and ultrasound, we can use intrinsic properties of flowing blood to emphasize the vessels.

This section covers the key concepts behind how we see the vessels for these major techniques.

When do I order these tests?

Once you know about the different possible techniques, then you have to figure out when you would possibly order them. Each technique (CTA, MRA, and US) have different advantages and disadvantages that make them more or less suited to different scenarios.

What’s next?

Once you’ve finished this video, I recommend moving on to the next section of the vascular capstone, where you can learn a general strategy for interpreting a CT angiogram of the head and neck.

The capstone overview is here, if you’d like to see all the browseable cases and videos.

Or, see all of the vascular capstone videos in the vascular imaging capstone playlist.