ARTSENS® Pen: A portable, image-free device for automated evaluation of vascular stiffness

Abstract

Evaluation of vascular stiffness is significant in diagnosis for early detection of vascular injury and has potential in screening individuals at risk of future cardiovascular events. State of art techniques use an imaging system for measuring carotid artery stiffness, or rely on carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (PWV) to evaluate vascular stiffness. These techniques are costly, require expertise to perform and are not amenable for scaling to the population level. To address this gap, we have developed ARTSENS® Pen, a high portable, small, ultrasound based instrument for automated evaluation of carotid artery stiffness. The device has an integrated hardware for ultrasound signal acquisition and digitization that operate along with any Windows tablet for data visualization and result display. Algorithms for real time signal processing and automated artery wall identification and tracking ensures a completely automated measurement of carotid artery stiffness with no operator input. The accuracy of automated arterial dimension measurements performed by ARTSENS®Pen is verified by phantom studies in comparison with a reference ultrasound imaging system. The ability of the device to provide reliable measures of arterial stiffness in-vivo is verified by a systematic study on 29 volunteers. The inter operator and intra-operator variability of stiffness index, β was evaluated to be 17% and 9% respectively. The ARTSENS® Pen was found to be capable of providing accurate and repeatable measures of arterial stiffness in an easy manner and has strong potential in large scale vascular screening.