Doppler Ultrasound Automatic Vessel Locator and Monitor

描述(由申请人提供)： 这项建议是为了发展新的多普勒超声概念，以自动确定大脑基底动脉的位置。这项技术需要快速而简单地诊断可能表明急性中风正在进行或中风风险的病理血流状况。这项技术还有可能极大地减少寻找血管所需的时间，减少培训时间，并为更多的卫生专业人员打开大门，以获得具有高度敏感性和特异性的重要信息。这项技术将消除目前经颅多普勒超声使用者所经历的限制使用的挫折感。这项技术在急性中风患者的诊断和监测中将特别重要，因为在有限的时间窗口内，溶栓治疗是一种选择。建议的工作包括：(1)建造一种新型的超声探头和电子设备，能够引导超声波束；(2)对数字化的接收回波进行高速信号处理，以确定相关多普勒频移信号的空间位置；以及(3)引导超声波束锁定检测到的血流。这项计划是开发一种新型超声探头的第一步，这种探头将在没有辅助的情况下对大脑基底动脉进行定位。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal is to develop new Doppler ultrasound concepts for automatic determination of location of basal arteries of the brain. This technology is needed for quickly and simply obtained diagnosis of pathological blood flow conditions that may indicate acute stroke in progress or the risk for stroke. This technology also presents the potential for dramatically reducing the time necessary to find blood vessels, reducing training time, and opening the door for a much wider group of health professionals to obtain the important information provided with high sensitivity and specificity. The utilization limiting frustrations experienced by current users of transcranial Doppler ultrasound will be eliminated with this technology. This technology will be particularly important in diagnosis and monitoring of the acute stroke patient during the limited time window in which thrombolytic therapy is an option. The work proposed entails: (1) building a novel ultrasound probe and electronics with ability to steer the ultrasound beam, (2) performing high speed signal processing of digitized received echos for determination of spatial location of the associated Doppler shift signals, and (3) steering the ultrasound beam to lock in on this detected blood flow. This plan presents the first step in developing a novel ultrasound probe which will perform unaided location of the basal cerebral arteries.