Studies in vitro of the relationship between ultrasound and laser Doppler velocimetry and applicability to the simplified Bernoulli relationship.

Abstract

While there has been wide general acceptance of Doppler methods that use the simplified Bernoulii relationship to estimate pressure gradients across stenotic orifices, there is still ongoing controversy related to potential sources of error in the method. In this study we tested accuracy o ultrasound Doppler measurements of flow velocity when compared with the gold standard of laser light Doppler anemometry in a pulsatile flow model of pulmonic stenosis in vitro. We tested two commercially available Doppler systems and examined steered and nonsteered, parallel and off-axis and angle-corrected velocity determinations using continuous-wave and high-pulse repetition frequency (HPRF) methods. We also examined the potential range of error in the simplified Bernoulli method. One hundred and twenty individual flow states were examined with three stenotic valve orifices (3.0, 1.0, and 0.5 cm2 flow area) to measure velocities up to 620 cn/sec. A very high correlation coefficient was obtained for the comparison of ...