Carotid Stiffness Variations in the Presence of Established Risk Factors: Observations from a Clinical Study Using ARTSENS

We report a novel, easy to use, portable device - ARTSENS®, for evaluating vascular stiffness from the carotid artery. Association between the measured carotid stiffness indices (β, Ep, and AC) and the gold-standard reference aortic pulse wave velocity (aPWV; measured using a clinical-grade device) was investigated. Carotid and aortic stiffness, assessed on 390 subjects, were classified into no, medium, and high-risk groups. After adjustment of age and gender, β and Ep measured by ARTSENS® positively correlated with aPWV (r = 0.54 and 0.6, respectively), and AC was negatively correlated (r = - 0.52). Measurements from the carotid artery were sensitive to detect the age-related increase in vascular stiffness and trends agreed with the reference aPWV, indicating that ARTSENS® detects changes otherwise detected using aPWV. A significant increase in carotid artery stiffness was observed from the no-risk group to the high-risk group. The ability to detect such a graded increase in vascular stiffness in the presence of risk factors further demonstrated the potential of ARTSENS® in vascular screening, especially in field settings.