RESEARCH ARTICLE


Colour Doppler Flow Measurements Using Surface Integration of Velocity Vectors (SIVV): Effect of Colour Flow Gain, Pulse Repetition Frequency and Number of Imaging Planes



Michelle S. Chew*, 1, 2, Joakim Brandberg6, Birgitta Janerot-Sjöberg5, Erik Sloth2, 3, J. Michael Hasenkam2, 4, Per Ask6
1 Department of Intensive Care Medicine, Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden
2 Department of Clinical Institute, Aarhus University Hospital, Skejby, Denmark
3 Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine, Aarhus University Hospital, Skejby, Denmark
4 Department of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery, Aarhus University Hospital, Skejby, Denmark
5 Department of Medicine and Care, Clinical Physiology, Linköping University Hospital, Sweden
6 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Linköping University Hospital, Sweden

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2008
Volume: 2
First Page: 56
Last Page: 61
Publisher Id: TOMIJ-2-56

Article History:

Received Date: 29/4/2008
Revision Received Date: 6/6/2008
Acceptance Date: 8/6/2008
Electronic publication date: 24/6/2008
Collection year: 2008

© 2008 Chew et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Intensive Care Medicine, Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; E-mail: Michelle.Chew@med.lu.se


Abstract

Surface Integration of Velocity Vectors is a colour Doppler control volume technique for blood flow measurements. Factors such as colour flow gain (CFG), pulse repetition frequency (PRF) and the number of imaging planes may however affect the quality of measurements. Our aim was to describe how CFG and PRF affect the accuracy of Surface Integration of Velocity Vectors (SIVV) flow in in vitro models and to investigate the number of planes required for precise SIVV measurements in an in vitro model and in vivo at the left ventricular outflow tract. Our results show that the measured SIVV flow varied according to the gain setting while PRF had no significant effect. At least two planes were necessary to obtain <10% measurement error in vitro, and four planes were required for <20% measurement error in vivo. We conclude that CFG but not PRF had significant effects on the velocity estimate. At least two and preferably >4 imaging planes are required for precise SIVV flow measurements.

Keywords: Flow, doppler, echocardiography, cardiac output.