Extensive verification and validation studies (4000+ subjects, 6 clinical settings, 1 field and 1 camp study, and 75+ publications) conducted on multiple versions of ARTSENS® established the ability of the technology measure arterial stiffness from the carotid artery, and illustrated its usability in resource constrained settings by non-expert operators. The latest version of this technology, called ARTSENS® Plus – can measure the local carotid artery stiffness, carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity and central blood pressure – thereby giving a comprehensive assessment of early vascular health markers. This device can be operated in conjunction with a tablet computer, and has fully automated algorithms for measurement and real-time quality control, which allows the instrument to easily obtain an accurate and reliable measure of local and regional arterial stiffness indices simultaneously, with no operator input. The repeatability and reproducibility of ARTSENS® Plus have been established in arterial flow phantoms mimicking human anatomy and physiology.
The ARTSENS® Plus device now makes it possible to easily perform a comprehensive assessment of vascular stiffness in resource constrained settings without using expensive imaging systems and eliminates the need of a sonographer for the test. Accelerated vascular ageing indicated by increased vascular stiffness is an established pre-cursor of future cardiac events in a variety of disease such as cardiovascular, stroke, renal disease etc. This cross-sectional study is to further establish the measurement accuracy of the ARTSENS® Plus device, in comparison to an established reference system such as the SphygmoCor, to demonstrate its utility and ability to capture various measures of arterial stiffness in controlled laboratory settings. This study is envisaged as a precursor to further clinical research using ARTSENS® Plus for various screening applications such as assessment endothelial dysfunction, kindly disease, peripheral vascular disease, pre-eclampsia, etc.
