The conventionally used method requires centerline of vessels to estimate the vessel diameter. Two methods of estimating the centerline of vessels are reported : One is manually observer-defined method. This potentially contributes to inter-and intra-observer variability. And the other is to auto- matically detect the centerline of vessels. But this is very complicated method. In this paper, we propose a new method of estimating vessel diameter using direction codes and position informs:ion without detecting centerline. Since this method detects the vessel boundary and direction code at d same time, it simplifies the procedure and reduces execution time in estimating the vessel diameter. Compared to a method that automatically estimates the vessel diAmeter uslng centerline, our method provides improved accuracy in image with poor contrast, branching or obstructed vessels. Also, this provides a good compression of boundary description, because each direction code element can be coded with 3 bits only, instead of the 4 bytes required for the storage of the coordinates of each border pixel. Our experiments demonstrate the usefulness of the technique using direction code for quantitative analysis of coronary angiography Experimental results Justify the validity of the proposed method.