Sizing emboli in blood using pulse Doppler ultrasound--I: Verification of the EBR model

An experiment to verify a theory describing ultrasound backscattering from emboli in flowing blood is presented. The theoretical predictions for the backscattered power versus embolus size are based on the measurement of the embolus to blood ratio (EBR) of backscattered acoustic power. This tool is necessary for in vivo clinical application because it removes the need to characterize attenuation and reflection loss in heterogeneous tissue. The experiment presented utilizes a customized ultrasound pulse Doppler that is capable of interrogating a sample volume with two different frequencies concurrently. A flow circuit including a 3.6-mm-diameter conduit in polyacrylamide gel in which emboli are observed with the dual frequency Doppler is described. The flow within the circuit has acoustic backscatter coefficient similar to blood due to a calibrated concentration of 31.1-mu diameter polystyrene microspheres. Polystyrene microsphere "emboli" having nominal diameters of 161 and 239 mu are placed in this flow loop and time series Doppler shift signatures are recorded. These signatures are investigated and a refraction artifact hypothesis is proposed to explain systematic deviation of the signatures away from theoretically expected results. Results show that gross discrimination of embolus size is feasible.