Estimation of Vascular Elasticity Based on DFT Analysis of Radial Pulse Waveform

Vascular elasticity (VE) of systemic arteries will become worse when people age. And this physiological change can be reflected in radial pulse Waveforms. In this study, we used non-invasive method to measure radial pulse waveforms (male subjects: 21 to 83 years old, Mean±SD = 40.6 ± 17.3. female subjects: 17 to 80 years old, Mean±SD = 39.2±19.1). Then we normalized the pulse waveforms, cut the feature part which is peak of main pulse of radial pulse to the point whose amplitude is 0.15. After discrete Fourier transform (DFT, length of DFT is N=8192) of this feature part, we discovered that weighted sum of amplitude of the ten frequent points (WSAFP) which are 19×fs/N to 28×fs/N (fs=500Hz) can reflect trend of VE changing with age, and tell VE difference between the people whose age differences are less than three years.