Comparison of measurement of the augmentation index from ARTSENS and eTRACKING

Abstract

Over past few years our group has been developing a fully automated and low-cost device, ARTSENS (ARTerial Stiffness Evaluation for Non-invasive Screening), to enable non-experts to measure arterial stiffness (AS). It uses a single element ultrasound transducer to obtain A-mode frames from a superficial artery such as the common carotid artery (CCA) and analyzes them to obtain the stiffness parameters of the vessel. We have earlier demonstrated that ARTSENS can accurately measure local arterial stiffness (LAS) and regional arterial stiffness (RAS) by tracing the distension waveforms of the CCA and the femoral artery. In this paper, we show that it is possible to estimate the augmentation index (AIx), a measure of the global arterial mechanics, from the distension waveforms obtained by ARTSENS. AIx measurements from ARTSENS are compared against the state-of-the-art Hitachi-Aloka eTRACKING system for 107 volunteers. Both devices show excellent agreement with a correlation coefficient (r)=0.82 (p<0.0001), which is comparable to similar studies reported in the literature. This development makes ARTSENS a unique device that can measure the three most widely used indices of arterial mechanics-LAS, RAS and the AIx.