MouseDoppler™
Mouse 10MHz & 20MHz Pulsed Doppler Ultrasound
The MouseDoppler is a real-time pulsed Doppler spectrogram acquisition and data analysis tool designed specifically for measuring cardiovascular function in mice and rats. The high sampling rates (up to 125kHz) and excellent temporal resolution (down to 0.1msec) are ideal for working with the elevated heart rates, rapid blood accelerations and high blood velocities present in mice. The package processes the pulsed Doppler signals using a fast Fourier transform algorithm and displays the results as a real-time grayscale Doppler ultrasound spectrogram. The included software allows you to record and analyze these spectrograms for report generation and publication purposes.
Extensive software support allows rapid data analysis and report generation resulting in increased productivity. Some of the parameters the MVRS has available for measurement are listed on the right.
Basic MVRS Configuration
The overall experimental setup to acquire Doppler blood flow velocity data from mice is shown above. The mouse is anesthetized with Ketamine / Xylazine / Acepromazine cocktail, Nembutal cocktail or other anesthetics depending on the desired type of study.
The mouse is placed in supine position with its four limbs taped to four electrode plates mounted on a board. These electrodes are connected via a cable to the ECG module in a signal processing system that will provide the mouse ECG signal output.
A 10 MHz pulsed Doppler probe is used with its tip placed just below the sternum and positioned to obtain a blood flow velocity signal from the aortic outlet or mitral inlet. In addition, blood flow velocities from peripheral arteries of mice can be obtained using a 20 MHz pulsed Doppler probe. These probes are plugged into analog pulsed Doppler signal generators (10 or 20 MHz) such as the “Baylor Multichannel High Frequency Pulsed Doppler Analog Mainframe”. Other equivalent systems such as those from Crystal Biotech / Data Sciences Inc. can also be used. These systems will generate in-phase and quadrature Doppler demodulated audio signals.