Department of Industrial, Electronic and Mechanical Engineering, University of Roma Tre, 00146 Rome, Italy.
Sensors (Basel). 2023 May 23;23(11):5005. doi: 10.3390/s23115005.
The increasing incidence of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) is reflected in additional costs for healthcare systems all over the world. To date, pulse transit time (PTT) is considered a key index of cardiovascular health status and for diagnosis of CVDs. In this context, the present study focuses on a novel image analysis-based method for PTT estimation through the application of equivalent time sampling. The method, which post-processes color Doppler videos, was tested on two different setups: a Doppler flow phantom set in pulsatile mode and an in-house arterial simulator. In the former, the Doppler shift was due to the echogenic properties of the blood mimicking fluid only, since the phantom vessels are non-compliant. In the latter, the Doppler signal relied on the wall movement of compliant vessels in which a fluid with low echogenic properties was pumped. Therefore, the two setups allowed the measurement of the flow average velocity (FAV) and the pulse wave velocity (PWV), respectively. Data were collected through an ultrasound diagnostic system equipped with a phased array probe. Experimental outcomes confirm that the proposed method can represent an alternative tool for the local measurement of both FAV in non-compliant vessels and PWV in compliant vessels filled with low echogenic fluids.
心血管疾病 (CVDs) 的发病率不断上升，这反映在全球医疗保健系统的额外成本上。迄今为止，脉搏传输时间 (PTT) 被认为是心血管健康状况的关键指标，可用于 CVDs 的诊断。在这种情况下，本研究侧重于一种新的基于图像分析的 PTT 估计方法，该方法通过应用等效时间采样来实现。该方法对两种不同的设置进行了后处理：一种是在脉动模式下设置的多普勒流量体模，另一种是内部动脉模拟器。在前一种情况下，由于仅模拟了血液的回声特性，因此多普勒频移仅归因于血液模拟液，因为体模血管没有顺应性。在后一种情况下，由于顺应性血管壁的运动，多普勒信号依赖于低回声特性的流体被泵送。因此，这两种设置分别允许测量平均流速 (FAV) 和脉搏波速度 (PWV)。数据通过配备相控阵探头的超声诊断系统采集。实验结果证实，所提出的方法可以作为替代工具，用于测量非顺应性血管中的局部 FAV 和充满低回声流体的顺应性血管中的 PWV。
