Valutazione della crescita testicolare con analisi quantitativa dell'ecogramma bidimensionale

The qualitative and subjective analysis of two-dimensional echograms has remarked changes in the ultrasonic response of the male gonad. This behaviour has to be considered a consequence of histological and physiological evolution of the testis. The present work aims to test if the quantitative analysis of the two-dimensional echograms could be an accurate method to identify the age of normal testis. Sixty-two normal subjects underwent echographic examination; on the base of a classification by age, they were grouped into six subsets. The echographic data were digitized and studied by means of well established algorithms for first order statistics. Results show a significant discrimination among the different growth stages, on the base of global grey level distribution in agreement with the histological reports and the qualitative analysis. We conclude that quantitative analysis of echograms provides features suitable to define the age of normal testis with good approximation.