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Measurement of Cerebrovascular Reactivity Using Transcranial Doppler

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Cerebrovascular Reactivity

Part of the book series: Neuromethods ((NM,volume 175))

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Abstract

The Doppler effect (or Doppler shift), which is the basis for the transcranial Doppler (TCD) technique, was described by Christian Andreas Doppler, an Austrian physicist, at a meeting of the Natural Sciences Section of the Royal Bohemian Society in Prague on 25 May 1842. The principle was presented in the paper Über das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne (Eden, Ultrasound Med Biol 16:831–832, 1990) (Concerning the colored light of the double stars) and initially applied to astronomy. In 1965, M. Miyazaki and K. Kato (Jpn Circ J 29:375–382, 1965) described the use of ultrasonic Doppler technique in the evaluation of blood flow and hemodynamics. However, ultrasound technology at the time was not able to penetrate the skull, and therefore cerebral blood flow (CBF) could not be assessed directly. With the development of the low frequency pulsed Doppler technique (2 MHz), able to penetrate the calvarium in most skulls, Aaslid et al. (J Neurosurg 57:769–774, 1982) were able to use TCD to measure blood flow velocity in the intracranial arteries for the first time. Since then, TCD has been used in medical practice as a technique to measure CBF and later cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) in many conditions, including ischemic stroke, TBI, subarachnoid hemorrhage and vasospasm, and brain death, both in clinical practice and as a research tool in the search of better understanding physiologic responses of the intracranial circulation to healthy and pathologic stimuli. The objective of this chapter is to provide a brief summary of the use of TCD in the evaluation of cerebrovascular reactivity, with a brief overview of its use in TBI and aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Neurosurgery, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Leodante da Costa

  2. Department of Surgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Leodante da Costa

  3. Department of Critical Care Medicine, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Martin Chapman

  4. Department of Anesthesia, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Martin Chapman

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  1. Leodante da Costa
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  2. Martin Chapman
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Correspondence to Leodante da Costa .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Jean Chen

  2. Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Zurich, Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Jorn Fierstra

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da Costa, L., Chapman, M. (2022). Measurement of Cerebrovascular Reactivity Using Transcranial Doppler. In: Chen, J., Fierstra, J. (eds) Cerebrovascular Reactivity. Neuromethods, vol 175. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1763-2_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1763-2_4

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