British Journal of Radiology 75 (2002),568 © 2002 The British Institute of Radiology
Vascular Ultrasound of the Neck. An Interpretive Atlas. By A Alayon and W M McKinney, pp. xi+146, 2001 (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Philadelphia, PA), US$120.00 ISBN 0-7817-2534-8
F Gardner
This hardback book, based on 35 years imaging experience of the authors, is a testament to their dedication. Vascular Ultrasound of the Neck. An Interpretive Atlas consists of 142 pages (126 pages if reference pages are excluded) divided into 10 chapters. In Chapter 1, there is a limited discussion (6 pages) on the clinical assessment of the patient. Chapters 2–8 examine normal anatomy, haemodynamics, pathology, plaque morphology and anatomic variants. The remaining chapters cover a medley of interpretation of abnormal pulses and rhythms, vertebral artery haemodynamics and pathology, and internal jugular vein and incompetent valves and artefacts.
The anatomical images are both exquisite and impressive. They are clearly and accurately annotated. At the end of every chapter, the "pearls and pitfalls" are a useful adjunct to the limited text. Additionally, the question and answer section is helpful as a teaching aid to both trainees and ultrasonographers. While the grey scale and colour images are of a uniformly high standard, the Doppler spectral samples are generally rather "noisy". The chapter on anatomic variants is somewhat disappointing as the majority of examples simply demonstrated tortuous vessels.
This book is easy to read, benefits from the lack of dedicated physics chapter and would appeal to those readers who prefer pattern recognition with restricted, but relevant, text. This interpretative atlas would be useful to all those training in vascular ultrasound of the neck, but would have limited appeal to those already proficient in this imaging modality.
