Children's Heart Institute | Cardiac Testing: Echocardiography

What is it? | Color Doppler | Black & White vs. Color | Sound

Pediatric Echocardiography: Color Doppler

You will notice that sometimes the technician will push a button and a color image will be displayed on the screen. This is called Color Doppler. The Color Doppler means that we caught the direction of the blood with two colors. The blue color indicates the blood flowing away from the imaging site. The red color means the blood is flowing towards the imaging site.

For an example of how the Color Doppler works, we will use the Mitral Valve. If you are looking at the Mitral Valve with a probe we will see that the color coming across the valve is red. If you look at the flow and you find that some of it is blue, that means some of the blood is traveling backwards through the valve (regurgitation). This technology is also very helpful when there is a very tiny hole between the heart chambers that can not be seen or may be missed by regular imaging. You can see from these examples how the Color Doppler helps doctors to see what is going on in your child's heart.

You may have wondered when you were watching the doctor performing a cardiac ultrasound on your child - what do the colors mean? What you see on an echocardiogram does not indicate the color of the blood. For example, blue does not indicate blue blood and red does not indicate red blood. The color is simply a code given to the blood depicting the direction it is flowing in reference to the ultrasound probe. If the blood is flowing towards the ultrasound probe (ultrasound camera) it will look red. If the blood is flowing away from the probe it will look blue.

You can see in this picture the four chambers of the heart: Right Atrium, Right Ventricle, Left Atrium, and Left Ventricle separated by the Atrial Septum and Ventricular Septum with no apparent holes in the walls.

Applying color to the same patient you notice that the color in the chambers is red and the flow is coming from the Left Atrium towards the Left Ventricle and towards the probe.

Color Helps Doctors Find Problems
Now you can see the importance of color in a child who has a hole in his heart. When you look at the first picture without the color you can see the hole, but you can see in the picture with the color added how nicely it is depicted and how easy it is for doctors to discover the hole. This hole is called Atrial Septal Defect (ASD).

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Next we will discuss further the comparison of black & white and color echocardiography.

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