Laser Doppler Vibrometry for Assessment of Arteriosclerosis: a First Step Towards Validation

It has been shown that in cardiovascular risk management, stiffness of large arteries has a very good predictive value for cardiovascular disease and mortality. This parameter can be estimated from the pulse wave velocity (PWV) measured between the common carotid artery (CCA) in the neck and femoral artery (FA) in the groin. However PWV can also be measured locally in the CCA, using non-invasive methods such as ultrasound (US) or laser Doppler vibrometry (LDV). Potential of the latter approach was already explored in previous research, and in this work a first step towards clinical validation is made. 50 hypertension II/III patients aged between 30 and 65 participate in the study. Patients were asked to remain sober for 4 hours prior to the measurements. The trajectory of the CCA in the neck was determined by a trained clinician guided by an US probe. 3 laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) systems were aimed along the CCA. PWV was then calculated from the distance between beams and the time-shift between waveforms. Immediately after LDV measurements, PWV was measured with US. Additionally, carotid-femoral PWV was measured. As a validation, PWV results of the different techniques were compared with each other, and with medical background of the test subjects. Since data acquisition is still ongoing, data from only 20 patients will be discussed. No trends between measurement methods for PWV are apparent. However, a positive trend was detected between PWV as measured with LDV and blood pressure. More data, including additional experiments will be needed to verify this observation.