The assessment of placental blood flow by three‐dimensional color power Doppler ultrasound: preliminary result of a three‐dimensional histogram study

Abstract

Objective: To assess the placenta blood flow in normal gestation by three‐dimensional color power Doppler ultrasound.Methods: We collected normal pregnant women with gestational age between 20 and 40 weeks prospectively, consecutively and cross‐sectionally. Three‐dimensional ultrasound scanner, Voluson, 530D MT (Kretz, Zipf, Austria) was used to assess the placental blood flow in each case. First, we used the 3D transabdominal probe to scan the placenta under the 3D power Doppler mode at a fixed condition. Second, we used the VOCAL software (Kretz, Zipf, Austria) to calculate the histogram indices of fetal placental blood flow obtained from the 3D power Doppler scanning. The histogram indices included vascularization index (VI), flow index (FI), and vascularization‐flow index (VFI).Results: One‐hundred singleton pregnant women were enrolled into the program. The best‐fit equations for VI, FI, and VFI are 0.27107 × GΑ − 4.02743, 0.56115 × GΑ + 34.28945, and 0.15663 × GA − 2.53810, respectively. All the P‐values are less than 0.05. All the indices were positively correlated with the fetal gestational age. Besides, The VI, FI, VFI of fetal placenta in third trimester were all higher than those indices of fetal placenta in the second trimester.Conclusion: The fetal placental blood flow increases with the advancement of gestational age. Our data may be a useful reference for further studies of fetal placental flow in abnormal gestations.