A method to estimate wall shear rate with a clinical ultrasound scanner.

A simple technique to estimate the wall shear rate in healthy arteries using a clinical ultrasound scanner has been developed. This method uses the theory of fully developed oscillatory flow together with a spectral Doppler trace and an estimate of mean arterial diameter. A method using color flow imaging was compared with the spectral Doppler method in vascular phantoms and found to have errors that were on average 35% greater. Differences from the theoretic value for the time averaged wall shear rate using the spectral Doppler method varied by artery: brachial -9 (1) %; carotid -7 (1) %; femoral -22 (4) %; and fetal aorta -17 (10) %. Test measurements obtained from one healthy volunteer demonstrated the feasibility of the technique in vivo.