British Technology Group Limited

Baxter International Inc.

Spacelabs, Inc.

Robert Skidmore

David L Swendson

Miriam H Taimisto

Lawrence J Busse

Clement E Lieber

Mark A Konno

Robert R Entrekin

Michael Horrocks

Bruce M Nudell

Nicholas P Luckman

Method and device for assessing the state of blood vessels

Flowmeters

Medical devices

A probe for use within a catheter is disclosed. The probe transducer portion is constructed of a crystal hollow cylinder with an inside lead attached to the inner surface of the crystal cylinder. One end of the outside lead is positioned close to the outer surface, in a plane tangential to the outer surface, and is coupled to the outer surface of the crystal cylinder by a thin sputtered layer of conductive material. The probe transducer also includes a layer of acoustically absorbing material on the proximal end of the crystal, and layer of acoustically coupling material on the distal end of the crystal cylinder. The transducer element simultaneously generates an axially oriented signal beam at one frequency and a radially oriented signal beam at 2 different frequency. The signal beams are analyzed to calculate the blood flow area and the blood flow velocity, the product of which is the blood flow rate.

Ultrasound probe for use with transport catheter and method of making

A device for sensing blood flow in a human aorta and a method for its use. The device includes two arrays, each array including one or more ultrasonic transducers for transmitting and/or receiving ultrasonic pulses. By appropriate weighting and phasing of the two ultrasonic arrays, a wide beam for insonifying the entire aorta, and a narrow beam for insonifying only a portion of the interior of the aorta, are produced. In addition, signals from the arrays can be processed to produce a signal indicating the direction to move the device so that the wide beam insonifies the entire aorta and the narrow beam insonifies only an interior portion of the aorta. The direction-finding array can be made from sensors arranged in a north-south-east-west pattern or as four sectors of an annulus.

Doppler flow sensing device and method for its use

Growing community of inventors

Bristol, United Kingdom

Robert Skidmore