Sonography can be used in the management of pediatric soft-tissue vascular anomalies for diagnosing, for assessing lesion extent and for evaluating complications and response to therapy. The sonographic technique includes a combination of gray-scale imaging with color and spectral Doppler techniques. However the interpretation of the sonographic findings requires correlation with the clinical findings, some of which can be easily obtained at the time of scanning. This has to be combined with the use of appropriate nomenclature and the most updated classification in order to categorize these children into the appropriate management pathway. In this article, which is part 1 of a two-part series, the authors review the current classification of vascular anomalies, provide a clinical and a sonographic approach to these lesions, and review the most relevant clinical and sonographic features of vascular tumors including infantile and congenital hemangiomas, tufted angioma, kaposiform hemangioendothelioma, pyogenic granuloma, intramuscular capillary-type hemangioma and angiosarcoma.
Keywords: Children; Doppler; Hemangioma; Soft-tissue masses; Ultrasound; Vascular tumors.