The measurement of cutaneous blood flow in healthy volunteers subjected to physical exercise with ultrasound Doppler imaging and laser Doppler flowmetry
Affiliations: [a] Institute of Physiology, Medical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
| [b]
Saint-Petersburg I.P. Pavlov State Medical University (PSPbGMU), St. Petersburg, Russia | [c]
North-West State Medical University, L.G. Sokolov Clinical Hospital No122, St. Petersburg, Russia | [d] SPMinimaxLtd, St. Petersburg, Russia | [e]
State Scientific Center of the Russian Federation Institute of Biomedical Problems RAS, Moscow, Russia
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Helena Lenasi, Institute of Physiology, Medical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Zaloška 4, 1000 Ljubljana. Tel.: +386 1 543 7513; Fax: +386 1 543 7501; E-mail: [email protected] and Marina Girina, 34 Petrogradskaya Emb. 197101, St. Petersburg, Russia. E-mail: [email protected].
Abstract: We aimed to evaluate hemodynamic parameters in the cutaneous microcirculation during recovery to graded dynamic exercise performed on a cycloergometer by using two distinctive methods: high-frequency ultrasound Doppler flowmetry (UDF) and laser Doppler fluxmetry (LDF). Regarding UDF, the medium linear blood flow velocity (Vam) was estimated, expressed in absolute units (cm/s) whereas blood flow assessed by LDF was registered in arbitrary perfusion units (PU). We compared the corresponding perfusion values obtained by UDF and LDF, respectively, every 20 s during recovery period to physical exercise. Three types of microvascular blood flow dynamics were recorded: blood flow with an occasional paroxysm, a pulsatile blood flow pattern, and a shunting-type blood flow pattern. In the first type, the reaction time of registration and the direction of changes of UDF and LDF values coincided in 77.7%, exhibiting high correlation (r = 0.77; p≤0.001). In the second type, the direction of changes of UDF and LDF showed 85.0% similarity and a moderate correlation (r = 0.66; p = 0.0015), whereas in the third type, there was also a moderate correlation (r = 0.53, p = 0.0024). Our pilot experiments have shown that UDF could be regarded as a comparable substitutional method to LDF for studying skin microcirculation.
