Experimental evaluation of intrinsic and nonstationary ultrasonic Doppler spectral broadening in steady and pulsatile flow loop models

Intrinsic and nonstationary Doppler spectral broadening, and the skewness of the spectral representation, were evaluated experimentally using porcine red cell suspensions as ultrasonic scatterers. Theoretically, the relative Doppler bandwidth, defined as the intrinsic bandwidth divided by the mean Doppler frequency shift, should be velocity independent. The relative Doppler bandwidth invariance theorem was experimentally verified with an in vitro steady laminar blood flow model. It is shown that the relative bandwidth is both independent of the flow velocity and blood hematocrit. Using a pulsatile laminar flow model, the authors demonstrated that the relative Doppler bandwidth invariance theorem did not hold during flow acceleration and deceleration. In addition, a positive skewness of the Doppler spectra was observed during acceleration while a negative skewness was measured during the deceleration of blood. The effect of the window duration used in the Fourier spectral computation, on nonstationary broadening, is characterized.