A method and apparatus for automated detection of a general, non-sinusoidal type of periodicity in ultrasound Doppler signals from pulsatile blood flow is described. The method computes a pulsation index, which is a sum of the normalized powers of the fundamental and several harmonic components in the frequency spectrum of the banded Doppler signal. A weighting function may be applied to the power from each harmonic component in order to suppress contributions due to spurious peaks, as in the case when pulsatile flow is absent. Fig.3
