Claude Franceschi

Claude Franceschi (born October 12, 1942) is an angiologist French MD. After Shigeo Satomura who detected for the first time the blood flow with a Doppler Ultrasound machine, Gene Strandness measured the blood pressure at the ankle (1967), Léandre Pourcelot proposed the Arterial resistivity index (1974), and Gosling the Pulsatility index (1974). Claude Franceschi then tried to analyze more exactly the hemodynamic meaning of the Doppler signal wave from normal and diseased vessels. He published the results at numerous conferences and in the French book "L'Investigation vasculaire par ultrasonographie Doppler" ("Vascular Doppler ultrasound investigation") in 1977. Franceschi's major work was to match the principles of fluid mechanics with arterial and venous hemodynamics. After studying the correlations between the Doppler ultrasound, radiological and surgical data, he laid down the methodological and semiotic bases of vascular Doppler ultrasound. In 1977, he published the very first book in the world on Vascular Doppler Exploration (Vascular investigation by Doppler ultrasound) then translated into Italian and Spanish, in which he describes the hemodynamic principles and their expression in terms of Doppler signal. This data remains the undisputed reference for the stenosis quantification and a quality diagnostic. In particular, he worked on the criteria of arterial stenosis of limbs and carotids, Carotid pre-thrombosis, the Pressure-Perfusion Index (Franceschi Index), the Carotid Ratio and the exploration of the Circle of Willis. In 1978, he published the first observations of carotid plaque regression. In 1980 he described the Fistula Flow Ratio (French 'RDF') to assess the flow of arteriovenous fistulas, especially in renal dialysis. In 1981, he invented an interface process which allows for the first time the visualization of supra-aortic arteries by B-Mode echography. A Doppler method for exploring the compensatory ways of the cerebro-cervical vasculature was published the same year.