The assessment of local arterial stiffness from ultrasound images

Local arterial stiffness of the superficial arteries can be evaluated by measuring the diameter change during the heart cycle from ultrasound data in conjunction with the local pulse pressure. In this work, such a system is introduced, and the obtained results on the common carotid artery are compared with those obtained by measuring the carotid to femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV) which can be considered to be the ldquogold standardrdquo technique for the evaluation of arterial stiffness. 14 healthy subjects and 14 hypertensive patients were involved in the study. Results show that a direct evaluation of local carotid stiffness, obtained by an appropriate video processing system, can discriminate between healthy and hypertensive patients as does the carotid-femoral PWV technique.