Theoretical Analysis of the CW Doppler Ultrasonic Flowmeter

The widespread application of ultrasonic techniques for the measurement of pulsatile blood flow has been hampered by the lack of a detailed theoretical understanding of the Doppler ultrasonic flowmeter. A general model for the Doppler flowmeter based upon stochastic considerations of the scattering of ultrasound by blood is introduced in this paper. The model characterizes the back- scattered ultrasound as a Gaussian random process and the expression for the autocovariance function is derived. For the CW Doppler flowmeter, the power spectral density function is computed, and its significance is emphasized: measurement of blood flow velocity corresponds to estimation of the average frequency of the Doppler power spectrum.