Study on Noninvasive Auto-Estimation of Pulmonary Vascular Resistance by Doppler Audio-Signal Processing System

Objective: To assess the feasibility and accuracy of Doppler audio-signal Processing system (DASPS) in noninvasive automatic estimation of pulmonary vascular resistance(PVR). Methods: PVR was estimated with DASPS in 32 children with left-to-right shunting congenital heart disease, compared with those estimated by Doppler echocardiography and cardiac catheterization. Results: PVR estimated by DASPS adopting aorta, pulmonary artery, pulmonary venous and mitral flow time intervals highly correlated with those measured by cardiac catheterization (r=0.93, p<0.001), better than those measured by Doppler echocardiography (r=0.79, p<0.01). The time for estimating PVR with DASPS was shorter than with Doppler echocardiography (7.1±±2.3 min vs 57.5±±16.5min, p<0.05), the repeatability for DASPS was better than for Doppler echocardiography (p<0.05). Conclusion: PVR could be accurately quantitatively, noninvasively, auto-estimated by DASPS.