A region-matching method for pulse transit time estimation: potential for improving the accuracy in determining carotid femoral pulse wave velocity

• Published in: Journal of human hypertension 2015-11, Vol.29 (11), p.675-682
• Main Authors: Hu, F S, Zhang, Y L, Ma, Z C, Cao, Q Q, Xu, Y B, He, Z J, Sun, Y N
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 692/699/75/593/2724; Adult; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Analysis; Carotid Arteries - physiopathology; Diagnosis; Epidemiology; Feet; Female; Femoral Artery - physiopathology; Femur; Health Administration; Humans; Hypertension; Male; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Methods; Middle Aged; Observer Variation; original-article; Peripheral Arterial Disease - diagnosis; Peripheral Arterial Disease - physiopathology; Predictive Value of Tests; Public Health; Pulse Wave Analysis - methods; Reproducibility of Results; Vascular Stiffness; Velocity
• ISSN: 0950-9240; 1476-5527
• DOI: 10.1038/jhh.2015.9

Carotid femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV) is the ‘gold standard’ for assessment of arterial stiffness. The reliability of cfPWV measurement depends on the estimation of pulse transit time (PTT). This study aimed to validate a region-matching method for determining PTT and cfPWV against the existing ‘foot-to-foot’ methods. A cohort of 81 subjects (33 males and 48 females) aged 25–80 (45.1±15.7 years) were studied. PTTs were estimated by the region matching and ‘foot-to-foot’ methods (‘diastole minimum’, ‘maximum first derivative’, ‘maximum second derivative’ and ‘tangent intersection’ methods) with manual identification as the reference method and were subsequently used to calculate cfPWV. In a subgroup of 30 individuals, the measurements were repeated after 1 h. There were excellent correlations between cfPWV obtained by the reference method and all the estimated methods ( r >0.9, P