Relation of arterial stiffness and axial motion of the carotid artery wall — A pilot study to test our motion tracking algorithm in practice

Recently researchers have shown growing interest in axial motion of common carotid artery wall. The amplitude of the axial motion of the wall has been initially linked to arterial stiffness and the direction of the axial stretch has been noted to vary, although not highlighted in the studies. In this study, an enhanced block matching algorithm, developed in our earlier study, was used to measure 2D-motion of the human carotid artery wall. A total of 19 healthy subjects were imaged and divided into two groups based on whether their axial motion of intima-media in left common carotid artery was primarily oriented along or against the direction of the blood flow. Statistically significant differences in two independent indices of arterial stiffness, as well as in the size of the artery, were found between the groups, suggesting that retrograde motion of intima-media is associated with smaller carotid arteries and is a possible sign of arterial stiffness.