Modified high-resolution wavenumber analysis for detection of pulse wave velocity using coefficient of variation of arterial wall acceleration waveforms

Purpose In high-resolution wavenumber analysis for detection of pulse wave velocity (PWV), phase information of analytic signals is used to estimate the wavenumber. However, the phase information could be affected by the adjacent signals in the temporal direction. Therefore, we propose a modified high-resolution wavenumber analysis technique using real acceleration waveforms of the arterial wall. Method In the modified wavenumber analysis, we propose a new evaluation function that corresponds to the inverse of the squared coefficient of variation. The accuracy of estimation of PWV was investigated by performing simulations, and the feasibility was also examined in an in vivo experiment. Results In the simulation experiments, the estimation accuracy using the proposed method was comparable to that using the previous method using phase information. However, when the pulse wave included the reflection components, the PWV estimated using the proposed method was more stable than that estimated using the previous method. Also, in the in vivo experiments, at opening of the aortic valve, the velocity estimated by the proposed method was almost equal to that estimated by the previous method (previous: 2.97 +/- 1.2 m/s, proposed: 4.82 +/- 1.4 m/s). Meanwhile, when the reflection components were present, the estimated PWV values yielded by the previous and proposed methods were - 1.13 and - 3.50 +/- 0.9 m/s, respectively. The PWVs at those two time points estimated by the previous method were quite different, and the PWV estimate was considered to be more affected by the reflected waves. Conclusion The results of the simulations and in vivo experiments indicated that the modified high-resolution wavenumber analysis method was less affected by the reflected waves and more accurate in estimation of PWVs of both the forward and reflected waves.