Evaluating microcirculation by pulsatile laser Doppler signal.

Laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF) is a popular method for monitoring the microcirculation, but it does not provide absolute measurements. Instead, the mean flux response or energy distribution in the frequency domain is generally compared before and after stimulus. Using the heartbeat as a trigger, we investigated whether the relation between pressure and flux can be used to discriminate different microcirculatory conditions. We propose the following three pulsatile indices for evaluating the microcirculation condition from the normalized pressure and flux segment with a synchronized-averaging method: peak delay time (PDT), pressure rise time and flux rise time (FRT). The abdominal aortic blood pressure and renal cortex flux (RCF) signals were measured in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and Wistar Kyoto rats (WKY). The mean value of the RCF did not differ between SHR and WKY. However, the PDT was longer in SHR (87.14 +/- 5.54 ms, mean +/- SD) than in WKY (76.92 +/- 2.62 ms; p < 0.001). The FRT was also longer in SHR (66.56 +/- 1.98 ms) than in WKY (58.02 +/- 1.77 ms; p < 0.001). We propose that a new dimension for comparing the LDF signals, which the results from the present study show, can be used to discriminate RCF signals that cannot be discriminated using traditional methods.

Pulse spectrum analysis of hospital patients with possible liver problems.

Pulse diagnosis were performed on 85 patients who came to the hospital for liver and gall-bladder problems. Correlation between liver tests, which include T-Bil, D-Bil, SGOT, SGPT, ZTT, Alp, gamma-GT, Cho, Alb, and ultra sound scanning, and pulse diagnosis were analyzed. 77 out of 85 subjects showed abnormal liver tests. We used the following 5 criteria for pulse diagnosis as liver abnormality to test the correlation: (1) C1 > or = 3+ and C1 + C4 > or = 4+ or C1 + C6 > or = 4 (in intensity); (2) C1 < or = 3 (in intensity); (3) C6 > or = 3 and C1 + C6 > or = 4 (in intensity); (4) C6 < or = -2 (in intensity) and C6 < or = -2 (in the phase) and (5) C1 > or = 2 C3 < or = -2 (in intensity) or C3 < or = -2 (in the phase). For C1 (liver) every 5% above normal was given one "+," every 5% below normal was given one "-." For C3 (spleen), C4 (lung), C6 (gall-bladder), every 10% above normal was given one "+,", every 10% below normal was given one "-." For the phase, every 10% delay in the traveling speed was given one "-." When considering only the "+" and "-" states and neglecting the quantity of "+" and "-," there are 2(11) (from intensity) x 2(11) (from phase), which equal 2048 x 2048 possible states in the pulse analysis. We considered only 5 criteria for liver abnormality; the correlation was still very high, p < 0.0002, kappa = 0.64. It strongly suggests that meridian theory and pulse diagnosis have physiological and pathological importance.