A simple quantitative screening test for the detection of extracranial carotid artery disease.

A simple screening test, using continuous wave Doppler ultrasound, for the detection of all grades of extracranial carotid artery disease has been described. The test is composed of two parts: (1) the determination of the direction of flow at the orbit and (2) on-line principal component factor analysis of the maximum frequency envelope of the Doppler shifted signal obtained from the common carotid artery. A total of 154 vessel segments have been investigated; 69 normal, 41 with a stenosis of 10-49%, 32 with a stenosis of 50-99% and 12 occlusions. Of these, 70 vessel segments were assessed prospectively and they formed the data base from which the principal components and the classification factor were calculated. The remaining 84 vessel segments were analysed prospectively on-line. The combined results gave an overall sensitivity to the detection of disease of 90% and a specificity of 77%. It has been shown that although classification of Doppler waveforms by principal component analysis is a fairly sophisticated technique it is possible, by careful design of the algorithms, to design a near real-time on-line analysis system for derived waveforms such as the maximum frequency envelope.