A software tool for the computation of arterial pulse wave velocity from flow-sensitive 4D MRI data

Recently, Markl at al. [1] demonstrated that the aortic pulse wave velocity (PWV) can be measured noninvasively based on flow-sensitive 4D MRI. However, the suggested post-processing workflow is very time consuming. In this paper, we present a more efficient PWV computation integrated into a dedicated software assistant, supporting all major steps for PWV computation. The implementation was validated on a digital phantom. Furthermore, two independent observers re-processed the volunteer data from the Markl et al. study with our software, so that outcomes as well as processing times could be compared. The implementation of our method gives similar accuracy and reproducibility to the method of Markl at al, but at a significantly reduced processing time.