Examining the kidneys using Colour & Power Doppler

If you have been performing any kind of small animal abdominal scanning, you will no doubt be familiar with kidneys. Even if you specialise purely in canine or feline pregnancy scanning, you will certainly have bumped into one or two in your travels.

If you own a colour Doppler machine like the Apogee 1000 Lite, Apogee 2100 or Apogee 2300, you may even have used colour Doppler to examine the kidney’s blood flow. The below clips are taken from a Shetland Sheepdog puppy with an abnormal kidney, the first with Colour Doppler, and the second with Power Doppler. Power Doppler shows only the amplitude of the blood flow signal, and not the direction. It is useful when high sensitivity is needed to detect very low flow.

Alpaca kidney

One of the greatest strengths of the Apogee series of ultrasound scanners is its highly sensitive and accurate Doppler. In this clip below, an alpaca kidney is examined first with colour and then with power Doppler: