Investigations of spectral resolution and angle dependency in a 2-D tracking Doppler method

An important source of error in velocity measurements from conventional pulsed wave (PW) Doppler is the angle used for velocity calibration. Because there are great uncertainties and interobserver variability in the methods used for Doppler angle correction in the clinic today, it is desirable to develop new and more robust methods. In this work, we have investigated how a previously presented method, 2-D tracking Doppler, depends on the tracking angle. A signal model was further developed to include tracking along any angle, providing velocity spectra which showed good agreement with both experimental data and simulations. The full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) bandwidth and the peak value of predicted power spectra were calculated for varying tracking angles. It was shown that the spectra have lowest bandwidth and maximum power when the tracking angle is equal to the beam-to-flow angle. This may facilitate new techniques for velocity calibration, e.g., by manually adjusting the tracking angle, while observing the effect on the spectral display. An in vitro study was performed in which the Doppler angles were predicted by the minimum FWHM and the maximum power of the 2-D tracking Doppler spectra for 3 different flow angles. The estimated Doppler angles had an overall error of 0.24° ± 0.75° when using the minimum FWHM. With an in vivo example, it was demonstrated that the 2-D tracking Doppler method is suited for measurements in a patient with carotid stenosis.