Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM)

Initially, there were large fluctuations in the Laser Doppler flow measurements due to the rhythmic movement of the chest region during respiration. Since it records the movement of blood cells exactly on the same site, it is highly sensitive to motion artifacts. The following graph shows an example flow measurement in brood patch of a non-broody jungle fowl showing huge fluctuations. The aero head shows the point where the NO gel is applied.The x-axis shows indicates the no. of recordings made on that spot and y-axis shows the perfusion value at that spot. We could clearly see huge fluctuations both before and after the application of gel and hence we could not conclude anything.

To prevent ventilatory fluctuations, the recording sites were chosen on areas where the movements were less notorious. Four sites adjacent to the brood patch were picked for subsequent trials: right thigh, left thigh, right and left & right side of skin covering the clavicle bone which connects chest region with the wings. The data was pooled from all the 7 birds and compared the effect of NO gel on these 4 sites. The average control perfusion value was 0.6652 for right wing; 0.644 for left wing; 0.6751 for right thigh and 0.6329 for left thigh. The average perfusion values after the application of NO gel were 1.5484 for right wing; 1.3787 for left wing; 1.3124 for right thigh and 1.3378 for left thigh. In all the four sites there was a significant raise in the curve soon after the application of NO gel which indicates the increase in the blood flow on that specific site.