Technical Validation of ARTSENS–An Image Free Device for Evaluation of Vascular Stiffness

Abstract

Vascular stiffness is an indicator of cardiovascular health, with carotid artery stiffness having established correlation to coronary heart disease and utility in cardiovascular diagnosis and screening. State of art equipment for stiffness evaluation are expensive, require expertise to operate and not amenable for field deployment. In this context, we developed ARTerial Stiffness Evaluation for Noninvasive Screening (ARTSENS), a device for image free, noninvasive, automated evaluation of vascular stiffness amenable for field use. ARTSENS has a frugal hardware design, utilizing a single ultrasound transducer to interrogate the carotid artery, integrated with robust algorithms that extract arterial dimensions and compute clinically accepted measures of arterial stiffness. The ability of ARTSENS to measure vascular stiffness in vivo was validated by performing measurements on 125 subjects. The accuracy of results was verified with the state-of-the-art ultrasound imaging-based echo-tracking system. The relation between arterial stiffness measurements performed in sitting posture for ARTSENS measurement and sitting/supine postures for imaging system was also investigated to examine feasibility of performing ARTSENS measurements in the sitting posture for field deployment. This paper verified the feasibility of the novel ARTSENS device in performing accurate in vivo measurements of arterial stiffness. As a portable device that performs automated measurement of carotid artery stiffness with minimal operator input, ARTSENS has strong potential for use in large-scale screening.

Arterial compliance probe for cuffless evaluation of carotid pulse pressure

“…Construction of the arterial lumen diameter waveform from the ultrasound echo frames was performed using the fully automated algorithm of our clinically validated ARTSENS ® technology, demonstrated in a series of publications [ 27 – 29 , 33 – 35 ]. Briefly, in this technology locations of arterial near and far wall in the filtered ultrasound echoes were identified using wall detection algorithm [ 28 ]. Displacement of the identified wall locations was continuously tracked in successive frames using a correlation-based motion tracking technique [ 28 ], that enables capturing of the arterial diameter waveform, absolute ΔD and D D (in units of mm) in a beat-by-beat manner.…”

“…Briefly, in this technology locations of arterial near and far wall in the filtered ultrasound echoes were identified using wall detection algorithm [ 28 ]. Displacement of the identified wall locations was continuously tracked in successive frames using a correlation-based motion tracking technique [ 28 ], that enables capturing of the arterial diameter waveform, absolute ΔD and D D (in units of mm) in a beat-by-beat manner. Since the proposed approach is an image-free ultrasound technique [ 27 – 29 ], the quality of acquired ultrasound echoes was inspected continuously and displayed on the GUI by an application-specific signal quality parameterization algorithm [ 35 ].…”

Determination of Incremental Local Pulse Wave Velocity Using Arterial Diameter Waveform: Mathematical Modeling and Practical Implementation

“…P E(t) = P (t) − η ∂D (t) ∂t (10) The value of η for individual cardiac cycles can be estimated by iterative optimization to minimize the pressure-diameter hysteresis. Finally, reference C(t) can be evaluated using PE(t) in the BH equation as in (11). Fig.…”

“…The measurement system employed a handheld probe with a focused, broadband single-element ultrasound transducer (center-frequency = 5 MHz). Our extensively validated image-free ultrasound technology, ARTSENS ® [11], was used for measuring D(t) from the carotid artery by processing the captured ultrasound Ascan frames (framerate = 1 kHz). Systolic and diastolic brachial BP measured from the upper arm using a clinical-grade sphygmomanometer (SunTech ® 247 TM ) was scaled to the carotid artery [6] to obtain the carotid PS and PD in real-time.…”

Ultrasonic Characteristics of Cardiovascular Changes in Children with Hutchinson–Gilford Progeria Syndrome: A Comparative Study with Normal Children and Aging People

“…Speckle tracking imaging has been recognized as a useful tool for the angle-independent quantification of myocardial strain [8] and can be applied as a sensitive marker for early myocardial dysfunction before the appearance of left ventricular (LV) remodeling [8,9]. e-tracking (ET) technology has often been used in predicting artery stiffness, because this can provide real-time pressure-strain elastic parameters [10]. In view of the fact that artery stiffness is an early sign of arteriosclerosis, the early detection of artery stiffness by ET technology may have the potential to predict the risk of arteriosclerosis.…”