A novel method for assessing arterial stiffness by a hydrostatic approach

Arterial stiffness is an important index for cardiovascular events. The objective of this study is to examine possible parameters related to arterial stiffness that can be estimated during simple arm movements. An experiment was conducted on 32 subjects divided into two groups, one with an age of 26plusmn4 years old, and the other 61plusmn9. The pulse transit time measured from electrocardiogram to finger photoplethysmogram (PPG) and the amplitude of PPG were calculated beat-to-beat for the subjects while they had their arms lowered. The results of the study showed that the ratio between percentage changes in PTT and finger height are significantly different for the two groups of subjects with different age and health conditions, indicating that parameters can be potentially extracted from this procedure to represent the difference in arterial stiffness of the two groups of subjects.