Arterial Pulse Analysis of Multiple Dimension Pulse Mapping by Local Cold Stimulation for Arterial Stiffness

Arterial stiffness is an early marker of cardiovascular disease. Nowadays, non-invasive tests are widely utilized in clinical diagnosis and play an important role in early detection. Pulse wave analysis (PWA) is typically used as a way to investigate arterial risk factors, measuring radial pulse waveforms with single-point sensors. The three-dimensional pulse mapping (3DPM) made by array radial pulse waves can expose holistic health states. It is interesting to see the difference between 3DPM and PWA in arterial waveform changes. This paper uses a multiple-point bi-sensing pulse diagnosis instrument to get radial pulse data, then constructs multiple-dimension pulse mapping (MDPM), including 3DPM and dynamic 2DPM. The 30 healthy subjects were studied by being given local cold stimulation on the left radial artery to induced anomalous pulse waveform. Pulse data were measured at three stages: base, cold, and recovery. The augmentation index and H3/H1 were significantly higher (P <; 0.01 ) at cold than base. In MDPM analysis, both diameters (longitudinal and transverse) were significantly higher (P <; 0.001 ) in cold. In comparison, MDPM indexes increased 17% sensitivity higher than PWA. Furthermore, MDPM provides an immediately visible image of arterial waveform changes. This paper provides an automatic abnormal arterial waveform measurement system to reconstruct a visible image that could easily analyze diverse levels of arterial waveform changes, with more sensitivity than those from PWA. Thus, it is suggested that this efficient approach has a potential application to assess vascular wall variables, particularly to increase early detection of abnormal arterial waveforms, due to its high sensitivity.