An echo from the past: Building a Doppler repository for big data in diving research

Abstract

Decompression sickness (DCS) remains a major operational concern for diving operations, submarine escape and high-altitude jumps. Aside from DCS symptoms, venous gas emboli (VGE) detected with ultrasound postdive are often used as a marker of decompression stress in humans, with a specificity of 100% even though the sensitivity is poor [1]. Being non-invasive, portable and non-ionizing, ultrasound is particularly suited to regular and repeated monitoring. It could help elucidate interand intra-subject variability in VGE and DCS susceptibility, but analyzing these recordings remains a cumbersome task [2].