Easily Identify Blood Vessel Structures
Color doppler mode provides your “road map” – a perfect guidance system
Using Color Doppler Mode, flow velocities within vessels are color-coded!
Vessel networks and flow patterns can be laid out in a complex manner. Using Color Doppler, the intensity of the color is a function of velocity. Flow towards and away from the transducer is indicated either as red or blue, respectively. To remember this, use the name of a famous yellow cartoon character as an acronym: BART – Blue Away, Red Towards (with the top of the screen as your reference point).
Benefits of the Color Doppler Mode:
- Provides a visual overview of flow within the vessel or heart
- Rapid identification of vessels, valves, turbulent flow
- Assess flow direction and velocity
- Quantify volume and percent vascularity when combined with 3D Mode
- Guidance for reproducible quantification of flow velocities using Pulsed-Wave Doppler
When should you use the Color Doppler Mode?
- Identify area of stenosis or thrombosis (e.g. TAC or aneurism models)
- Determine the presence and amount of arterial plaques and associated turbulent flow
- Find small vessels such as mouse coronary arteries, femoral and arcuate arteries
- Evaluate blood flow after a stroke or other conditions causing impaired blood flow
- Monitor blood flow to major organs such as heart, kidney, liver pancreas, carotid, abdominal aorta, and others
Examples of Color Doppler
3D color doppler image of a subcutaneous tumor.
Color doppler image illustrating vasculature in the mid-gestation mouse placenta.