System for determining peripheral artery disease and method of use

Abstract

A system for determining peripheral artery disease and method of use for determining the presence or absence of peripheral vascular disease and the severity of the disease in particular vascular segments. The System for determining peripheral artery disease and method of use includes a continuous wave Doppler transceiver which generates a digitized version of quadrature detected stereo audio and is coupleable to a waveform converter and processor. The waveform converter and processor provides filtering, time domain to frequency domain conversion, gain control, and statistical processing of the converted Doppler Stereo audio and is operationally coupled to a display for presenting results to a technician.

1 - 61 . (canceled) 
     
     
         62 . A system for determining peripheral artery disease comprising:
 a Doppler transceiver configured to capture and digitize a baseband stereo audio representation of Doppler-shift signals received back from moving blood by quadrature detection preserving directionality of blood flow;   a waveform converter and processor operably coupled with the Doppler transceiver, the waveform converter and processor configured to analyze the audio representation to determine indicia of peripheral artery disease, by:
 identifying a series of short time samples, 
 converting the short time samples into a frequency domain representation of the baseband stereo audio representation of the Doppler-shift signals, 
 producing a directional sonogram by spectral analysis of the frequency domain representation, 
 generating a maximum frequency outline for both forward and reverse blood flow, 
 detecting secondary peaks in the directional sonogram between a forward systolic peak and an end diastole of at least one cardiac cycle, 
 filtering the secondary peaks to those having an amplitude between 5% and 70% of the amplitude of a forward systolic peak of the cardiac cycle, or having an amplitude greater than 2/64th of a maximum reverse flow peak, and 
 generating a monoticity indicator based on the detection of the secondary peaks; and 
   a display operably coupled to the waveform converter and processor configured to provide at least one visual indicia to a user.