We have derived and evaluated parameters from ultrasound images of the neck to permit a computer to automatically characterize and differentiate between the carotid artery and jugular vein at image acquisition time during vascular interventions, given manually placed seed points.arotid Artery and Jugular Vein Tracking and Differentiation 655 angular deviation may reverse the perceived flow and make identification of the ves-sels ambiguous. Thus color Doppler is generally only used during pre-operative evaluation and not during the actual procedure.