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 healthy subjects. We examined the reproducibility for different examiners and different time intervals between the examinations. Doppler frequency sonograms were analyzed with several parameters, and statistical evaluation 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 reproducibility (r = 0.902-0.992, CV = 2.15-8.16%). On the other hand, end-diastolic velocity (D2), acceleration time (AT) and acceleration index (AI) showed poor reproducibility. We conclude that the reproducibility of this method is acceptable for repeated measurements of renal blood velocity, using suitable parameters S, D1 and MV. (C) 1997 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology.