Umbilical artery waveform analysis based on maximum, mean and mode velocity in early human pregnancy

The objective of this study was to identify the best method for reconstructing blood-flow velocities from the early human umbilical artery to determine the physiological changes in fetal blood-flow velocity and heart rate. Pulsed Doppler recordings from the umbilical artery with a duration of approximately 7 s were made at 10-20 weeks of gestation. For reconstruction of the blood-flow velocity from the Doppler audio signal, the maximum (envelope), mean and mode frequency reconstruction methods were used. For the assessment of variability in blood-flow velocity and heart rate in the umbilical artery, the maximum velocity reconstruction method is preferred because it is relatively insensitive to noise, nonuniform insonation, and wall filter settings.