Objective: Arterial stiffness is an important marker to predict cardio vascular events. Common measurement techniques to determine the condition of the aorta are limited to the acquisition of the arterial pulse wave at the extremities. The goal of this work is to enable non-invasive measurements of the aortic pulse wave velocity, instead. An additional aim is to extract further information, related to the conditions of the aorta, from the pulse wave signal instead of only its velocity. Methods: After discussing the problems of common pulse wave analysis procedures, an approach to determine the…
In this paper, a new fractional order generalization of the classical Windkessel arterial model is developed to describe the aortic input impedance as an assessment of the left ventricular after-load. The proposed models embeds fractional-order capacitor to describe the total arterial compliance. In this paper, we report our investigations on fractional calculus tools and demonstrate that fractional-order impedance can be used to determine the vascular properties and studying its dynamic effects. We conceived two fractional-order lumped parametric models: the fractional-order two-element Windk…
Pulse wave analysis is an important method used to gather information about the cardiovascular system. Instead of detecting the pulse wave via pressure sensors, bioimpedance measurements can be performed to acquire minuscule changes in the conductivity of the tissue, caused by the pulse wave. This work presents a microcontroller-based bioimpedance measurement system, which has the capability to acquire impedance measurements from up to four independent channels simultaneously. By combining a problem-specific analog measurement circuit with a 24 bits analog-to-digital converter, the system is c…