ULTRASONIC DOPPLER MODES

Abstract

Any US equipment includes Doppler facilities capable of providing information about moving structures inside the human body. In most cases, the primary interest is in the investigation of blood flow dynamics, since this may be helpful for early diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. However, there is also an increasing interest in tracking the movements of human tissues, since such movements can give an indirect evaluation of their elastic properties, which are valuable indicators of the possible presence of pathologies. This paper aims at presenting an overview of the different ways in which the Doppler technique has been developed and used in inedical ultrasound (US), from early continuous wave (CW) systems to advanced pulsed wave (PW) colour-Doppler equipment. In particular, the most important technical features and clinical applications of CW, single-gate PW, multi-gate PW and flow-imaging systems are reviewed. The main signal processing approaches used for detection of Doppler frequencies are described, including time-domain and frequency-domain (spectral) methods, as well as novel strategies like, e.g., harmonic Doppler mode, which have been recently introduced. to exploit the benefits of US contrast agents.