Ultrafast Ultrasound Vector Doppler for Pulsatility Measurement in Rat Spinal Cord Small Vasculature

Accurate measurement of spinal cord blood flow velocity and hemodynamics is imperative for the assessment and diagnosis of various vascular diseases. Recently, ultrafast Doppler has achieved great progress in small vasculature imaging with high sensitivity and high spatiotemporal resolution. However, the color Doppler imaging technique is still limited by Doppler angle-dependence, restricting its ability to accurately measure in-plane flow velocities. In this study, Ultrafast ultrasound vector Doppler was performed to overcome this limitation, providing accurate vectorized velocity measurements and enabling the study of spinal cord pulsatility by estimating the dynamic flow velocities within a single cardiac cycle. The pulsatility index can be computed as the difference between the peak systolic velocity and the end-diastolic velocity, divided by mean flow velocity.