Abstract
Background: Superb micro-vascular imaging (SMI) provided new advances in vascular imaging, resulting in revealing the overall vascularity detection of small or microflow states without the use of contrast media. This study aimed to explore the blood supply andfeeding artery of carotid body tumor (CBT) on SMI for providing more accurate information for surgery.Results: Twenty-six CBT lesions underwent color Doppler flow imaging (CDFI) and SMI, and were confirmed later by pathology. The blood flow patterns and feeding artery of CBTson CDFI and SMI were graded and compared.Compared with the application of CDFI, the pattern of more CBT lesionschanged to a higher Adler category by SMI (P<0.001). Thefeeding artery of two CBT lesions, which fail to show by CDFI, was internal carotid artery(ICA) by SMI and compared with CDFI the feeding artery of three changed from ICA or external carotid artery(ECA) to MIX (both ICA and ECA) by SMI. We classified the feeding artery of CBTs into originating from ICA or others (including ECA and MIX). For all the lesions, threelesions that stemmed from ICA and 23lesions that stemmed from ECAor MIX. CBT lesions stemming from ECA or MIX with Adler II or Adler III blood flow patterns accounted for 30.4% (7/23) or 69.6% (16/23), respectively, while CBT lesions stemming from ICA with Adler I or Adler II blood flow patterns accounted for 66.7% (2/3) or 33.3% (1/3), respectively. Conclusions: SMI is superior to CDFI in detecting vascularity of CBTs, and SMI could better investigate the origin of feeding vessels of CBTs in comparison to CDFI.Compared with those originating from ECA, CBTs from ICA has less vascularity.