Intramachine and intermachine variability in transesophageal color Doppler images of pulsatile jets. In vitro studies.

Color Doppler flow mapping is widely used as a marker of severity of valvular regurgitation, and the transesophageal approach has provided high-quality images in patients with poor acoustic windows. However, different instruments produce significantly variable images. Techniques that use jet spatial information to determine the severity of the lesion may need to be derived specifically for the instrument used. Given a lack of standardization of the many commonly used instruments, the goal of this study was to quantify variability between instruments by imaging well-defined jet flow fields created in vitro.