Quantitative Doppler in musculoskeletal ultrasonography - suboptimal performance of both experienced and in-training sonographers in selection of the highest Doppler signal image from cine-loops.

Aims: Doppler ultrasonography assessment is mandatory nowadays for the complete description of rheumatic disease activity. Initially it was performed in semi quantitative way but recently the (fully) quantitative assessment is gaining more interest. In quantitative assessment, the ratio between total colorized and total pixels (CTR) is computed for the whole image or just for the region of interest (ROI).

Multiobserver Reliability of Ultrasound Assessment of Salivary Glands in Patients with Established Primary Sjögren Syndrome.

Objective: To evaluate the multiobserver reliability of salivary gland ultrasonography (SGUS) for scoring greyscale (GS) parenchymal inhomogeneity and parenchymal color Doppler (CD) signal in patients with established primary Sjögren syndrome (pSS).

Methods: The study comprised 2 multiobserver reliability assessments in patients with pSS in 2 European centers. The first reliability exercise was performed on 24 patients with pSS and 8 controls who were independently evaluated with GS and CD US by 5 observers at the Institute of Rheumatology, Belgrade, Serbia.

Structural damage in rheumatoid arthritis: comparison between tendon damage evaluated by ultrasound and radiographic damage.

Objective: To compare structural damage assessed by conventional radiography and tendon damage assessed by musculoskeletal US (MSUS) at wrist and ankle in RA patients.

Methods: We evaluated 72 consecutive patients [56 (77.8%) females] with RA.