Measurement of local elasticity of human carotid arterial walls and its relationship with risk index of atherosclerosis

We have proposed a new method for evaluating the local elasticity of the arterial wall in order to diagnose the early stage atherosclerosis. In the case of the early stage atherosclerosis, the macular lesion is several millimeters in diameter. Therefore, it is necessary to find the local change in the elasticity of the arterial wall. In the proposed method, the small change in thickness of the arterial wall during cardiac cycle is accurately measured using ultrasound, and the elasticity of the arterial wall can be evaluated in every small region of about 1 millimeter, which corresponds to the width of the ultrasonic beam. In this report, the proposed method is applied to human carotid arteries of 54 male patients and 30 healthy male subjects, where the patients have high risk factor of coronary heart diseases. From this results, the difference in the elasticity of the arterial walls between healthy subjects and patients is investigated.