THE REPRODUCIBILITY OF COLOR DOPPLER DUPLEX SONOGRAPHY IN THE MEASUREMENT OF RENAL ARTERIAL BLOOD VELOCITY

In this study, the reproducibility of color Doppler duplex sonography for repeated measurements of renal blood flow was evaluated in 14 heal thy subjects. We examined the reproducibility for different examiners and different time intervals between the examinations. Doppler frequen cy sonograms were analyzed with several parameters, and statistical ev aluation was performed by calculating both the correlation coefficient (r) and the coefficient of variation (CV). Peak systolic velocity (S) , early diastolic velocity (D1) and mean velocity (MV) showed good rep roducibility (r = 0.902-0.992, CV = 2.15-8.16%). On the other hand, en d-diastolic velocity (D2), acceleration time (AT) and acceleration ind ex (AI) showed poor reproducibility. We conclude that the reproducibil ity of this method is acceptable for repeated measurements of renal bl ood velocity, using suitable parameters S, D1 and MV. (C) 1997 World F ederation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology.