Abstract:
The use of various imaging methods to evaluate the characteristics of vascular direction and blood supply in the perforator artery of the free flap plays an important role in breast reconstruction.The deep inferior epigastric perforator(DIEP) flap has tiny blood vessels but its anatomy varies in individuals.The use of preoperative imaging on vascular position, pipe diameter size, and vascular direction can improve the success rate and safety of surgery.The evaluation methods used in blood circulation include hand-held doppler, color duplex ultrasound examination, digital subtraction angiography, angiography, imaging angiography, modified discrete cosine transform, and indocyanine green laser-assisted angiography.This article introduces the merits and demerits of different preliminary inspection methods used in evaluating the features of vascular direction and blood supply of the DIEP flap, as well as the distribution of blood vessels during adjuvant breast reconstruction.