Inductive Plethysmography for aortic Pulse Wave Velocity.

Aortic stiffening is a process that is linked to cardiovascular risk factor increase. Then, aortic stiffness evaluation is considered as a good index of the evolution of pathophysiological situations, including myocardial infarction, heart failure, atherosclerosis or stroke. Today, pulse wave velocity (PWV) measurement is considered as the gold standard for evaluation of arterial stiffness. However, most of the current measurement techniques of PWV consider the time for the blood pressure pulse to propagate through a combined length of arteries and give access to arterial PWV. Therefore, none of the available techniques focuses only on the aorta. In the present context of smart clothes development, Inductive Plethsymography (IP) can be an interesting alternative for aortic PWV measure, since it has recently been shown that combination of thoracic and abdominal IP recordings can give cardiac information. We therefore investigate the potential of IP for aortic PWV measurement. In this preliminary study, a comparative analysis of PWV estimated from IP and PWV evaluated from the arm has been carried out on 11 healthy volunteers. Results show a significant linear correlation between both measures (r = 0.86, p<0.001), promising for future investigations on pathological populations.