A Doppler machine is designed into a probe that emits ultrasonic waves which travel through the boy and detect any sounds they come across in the body. Doppler probes can be used to detect different kinds of movements in the body. For instance, it can be used to check the heartbeat of a baby’s heart. It can also be used to detect the direction of blood flow and its velocity. When the waves come across movement in the body, they are reflected back to the probe. The frequencies of the outgoing ultrasound waves and that of returning waves usually vary and it is this variation that is used to determine speed and velocity of blood in Doppler blood test.
Let us take a look at some of the uses that a Doppler can be used for.
What are the main uses of a Doppler?
Dopplers in general can be used for several purposes in different situations. When used on pregnant women, fetal Doppler is used to detect the heart rate of the unborn child and the mother. This is useful in determining the overall health of the baby. If the baby has a stable heartbeat that has the right rate and rhythm, it can be concluded that its health is also generally good.
Doppler ultrasound can also be used to detect a number of medical conditions such as phlebitis, heart murmur, and certain aneurysms. It can also be used for the analysis of organ vascularization. Doppler ultrasound also finds use in intraoperative vascular analysis.
Transcranial Doppler is used to perform head injury assessment, diagnosis of brain death, detection of and follow-up of cerebral embolism, and detection of arteriovenous malformations within the brain.
What are the different types of Dopplers?
There are different types of dopplers and they present there results in different ways. There are those that present results in the form of images, sound, and graph. The three main types of dopplers are acoustic, spectral, and color dopplers. Acoustic dopplers are the variety that present their results in the form of sound. A good example of a Doppler of this kind is a transcranial Doppler. Transcranial dopplers make it possible to detect the speed of red blood cells inside the body by use of RF sound signals. A difference in the outgoing frequency and incoming frequency is what makes the difference that provides information regarding the speed of the red blood cells.
A spectral Doppler and a color doppler
Spectral dopplers are the type of dopplers that provide feedback in the form of a graph. The graph they produce represents the rate of flow that is recorded over a given period of time. A color Doppler is more like a color scanner merged with a Doppler. As such, color dopplers make it possible to see a visual representation of the direction and distribution of red blood cells in the body. They are very useful in the diagnosis of a huge number of medical conditions.
