Abstract
Peripheral artery disease (PAD) results from atherosclerotic plaque deposition on arterial walls causing reduced blood flow to affected tissue and can result in pain, tissue loss, poor wound healing, limb loss, and death. Diagnosis of PAD and clinical assessment of these patients requires the use of a vascular Doppler device. By emitting an ultrasound signal when placed over an artery and measuring the Doppler shift of the signal reflected from moving blood cells, this device produces an audio output descriptive of several blood flow parameters. As shown through multiple rounds of clinician interviews, current vascular Dopplers are expensive, bulky, and lack objective signal analysis. An improved vascular Doppler offering solutions to these problems was designed and prototyped. This prototype demonstrated a reduction in cost and comparable signal quality compared to Doppler devices currently available, and offered an opportunity for future development of automated signal analysis capabilities.
