Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2017, Vol. 5, No. 1, 25-29
Available online at http://pubs.sciepub.com/jbet/5/1/5
©Science and Education Publishing
DOI:10.12691/jbet-5-1-5
Comparative Study of Arterial Compliance Using
Invasive and Noninvasive Blood Pressure Waveform
I-Lu Chen, Yashbir Singh, Wei-Chih Hu
*
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Chung Yuan Christian University, Zhongli, Taiwan
*Corresponding author: weichihhu@cycu.edu.tw
Abstract Most of the epidemiological studies have shown a good relationship between blood pressure and
manifestation of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). CVD has become a very common health condition that exhibits
significant changes in distensibilility, compliance, and elastic modulus of the arterial vascular system. The main
causes of this disease are the spreading of fats and cholesterols which initiate the damaging of endothelium,
decreasing wall buffering capacity, and hardening of the arteries eventually leading to severe narrowing. We
compared data from invasive and non-invasive blood pressure wave form. Using the Windkessel model, to estimate
the arterial compliance as vascular index, we used data after the aortic valve closed to the end-diastolic point of
blood pressure waveforms, utilized Bland-Altman difference plot, T-test, box whisker plot and scatter diagram. We
analyzed physiological real data and investigated the correlation between the non-invasive and invasive blood
pressure wave form. Non-invasive compressive pulse waveforms can be used to assess the total compliance of the
arterial blood pressure waveforms of the invasive aorta that indicates the buffering of muscle and adipose tissue.
Keywords: cardiovascular disease, arterial compliance, Windkessel model, non-invasive blood pressure waveform
Cite This Article: I-Lu Chen, Yashbir Singh, and Wei-Chih Hu, “Comparative Study of Arterial Compliance
Using Invasive and Noninvasive Blood Pressure Waveform.” Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology,
vol. 5, no. 1 (2017): 25-29. doi: 10.12691/jbet-5-1-5.
1. Introduction
In current times, cardiovascular diseases (CVD) have
become the foremost component of mortality statistics in
the world [1,2]. It is estimated that approximately 78% of
deaths and 86% morbidity are caused because of CVD
worldwide. Reports suggest that CVD will be the global
health burden by 2020 [3,4]. This disease follows an
asymptomatic phase of development which builds up in
the body silently over a period of time without any major
sign on an individual’s health [5]. Many recent studies
demonstrated the relationship between biological aging
and arteriosclerosis towards the risk of cardiovascular
diseases, such as hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and
end-stage renal failure. With aging, the arterial wall
thickness and dilation, lengthening become less compliant
and increases pulse wave velocity which result in wave
reflections [6,7]. The extensive changes in the inner wall
of the artery, affects the elasticity of fibers which are
responsible for vessel distensiblility. The rising curiosity
of non-invasive arterial compliance detection led many
researchers to work in the field and put forth methods to
estimate the arterial compliance. Prior research of
cardiovascular structure and function is based on invasive
intra-arterial cannulation to get the arterial pulse wave [8].
The change in arterial pulse wave is a passive consequence
of increase in the blood pressure. In physiology,
compliance (C) = dV/dP (Ratio of the change in volume
(dV) resulting from change in pressure (dP)). Compliance
represents the slope of the pressure-volume relationship
[9,10]. In the context of an electric circuit, this is analog as
to the Windkessel model that simulates blood pressure
dynamics in the systemic arteries [11]. When stiffness
occur then wide pulse pressure, systolic hypertension, and
increased cardiovascular risk increase, because wide pulse
pressure and systolic hypertension are late indicators of
the arteriosclerotic process. There is important attention to
develop more sensitive compliance measurements that can
determine premature vascular stiffening at an earlier stage
[12]. In this work, we aimed to scrutinize a method of
evaluating arterial compliance using non-invasive blood
pressure waveform which could be a prevailing method for
medical science. Here, we used a dataset which is examined
under the supervision of a physician on standardized
conditions and we subsequently implemented a mathematical
approach. This research work proved that a noninvasive
method for the detection of blood pressure is significantly
and more precise, compared for the invasive approach.
2. Method
The overall framework in this paper has been majorly
grouped into various categories, namely, Study population,
data extraction, algorithm implementation, waveform
computation and experimental architecture.