ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a general background of Doppler ultrasound for fetal surveillance with emphasis on an evidence-based approach for its clinical application. Doppler sonography is based upon the physical phenomenon of Doppler shift first described by Austrian mathematician and physicist Christian Andreas Doppler in 1841. Doppler first reported this phenomenon at a meeting of the Natural Sciences Section of the Royal Bohemian Society in Prague, a meeting with only five members of the society in attendance and a transcriber. The phenomenon of the Doppler effect is observed when an ultrasound beam encounters a scatterer in motion. Doppler sonography can yield a variety of clinically useful hemodynamic information. Doppler waveform from an arterial source represents the arterial velocity waveform and is configured by both the upstream and downstream circulatory factors. The hemodynamic validation studies may be grouped as those relating to the peripheral resistance and those involving the impedance.
