Frequency-Dependent Attenuation Effects in Pulsed Doppler Ultrasound: Experimental Results

The quantitative capability of pulsed Doppler ultrasound in clinical practice is limited by the effects of frequency-dependent attenuation of ultrasound in tissue, as well as several other spectral-broadening mechanisms which distort the Doppler spectrum of an ultrasonic echo. In this communication, we present results of in vitro experiments which demonstrate the magnitude of the errors expected in clinical measurements of blood flow parameters when frequency-dependent attenuation Of ultrasound in biological tissue is ignored. It is shown that errors as large as 15 percent may occur in Doppler measurements of blood flow velocity through 7 cm of intervening tissue. A comparison is also made between experimental results and a theoretical model which includes the effects of scattering and attenuation.

[1]  L. William Varner,et al.  Geometrical Spectrum Broadening in Ultrasonic Doppler Systems , 1977, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[2]  Peter Atkinson,et al.  Pulse-Doppler Ultrasound and Its Clinical Application , 1977, The Yale journal of biology and medicine.

[3]  R C Chivers,et al.  The scattering of ultrasound by human tissues--some theoretical models. , 1977, Ultrasound in medicine & biology.

[4]  P. S. Green.  Spectral Broadening of Acoustic Reverberation in Doppler‐Shift Fluid Flowmeters , 1964 .

[5]  John M. Reid,et al.  Scattering of Ultrasound by Blood , 1976, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[6]  Peter D. Edmonds,et al.  Spatial Distributions of Heating by Ultrasound Transducers in Clinical Use, Indicated in a Tissue-Equivalent Phantom , 1985, IEEE 1985 Ultrasonics Symposium.

[7]  Pramode K. Bhagat,et al.  Attenuation and Backscattering of Ultrasound in Freshly Excised Animal Tissues , 1980, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[8]  D. Fitzgerald,et al.  Pulsed Doppler: a classification of results of diameter, velocity and volume flow measurement in diseased common carotid arteries. , 1983, Cardiovascular research.

[9]  E. S. Furgason,et al.  The Dependence of Ultrasound Doppler Bandwidth on Beam Geometry , 1980, IEEE Transactions on Sonics and Ultrasonics.

[10]  D. Baker.  Pulsed Ultrasonic Doppler Blood-Flow Sensing , 1970, IEEE Transactions on Sonics and Ultrasonics.

[11]  R. Kuc,et al.  Variation of acoustic attenuation coefficient slope estimates for in vivo liver. , 1982, Ultrasound in medicine & biology.

[12]  A. Simon,et al.  Pulsed Doppler: Diameter, Blood Flow Velocity and Volumic Flow of the Brachial Artery in Sustained Essential Hypertension , 1981, Circulation.

[13]  Avinash C. Kak,et al.  Signal Processing of Broadband Pulsed Ultrasound: Measurement of Attenuation of Soft Biological Tissues , 1978, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[14]  Vernon L. Newhouse,et al.  Analysis of Transit Time Effects on Doppler Flow Measurement , 1976, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.