Determination of Arterial Compliance Using Electrical Peripheral Bioimpedance

Arterial compliance is an important cardiovascular parameter. It can be measured by several techniques. Most of them are invasive. In this article, we investigated and confirmed the relevance of using a non-invasive method, peripheral electrical impedance to estimate compliance. We considered a study population composed by a healthy group of 82 volunteers, and a diseases group of 59 volunteers. We determined arterial compliance values for all subjects and studied them as a function of health status, gender, age, blood pressure, blood volume, and baseline impedance Z0. Experimental results showed that arterial compliance is significantly lower in cardiac (1.7 ± 1.0), or diabetic (1.5 ± 1) patients compared to healthy subjects, 2.6 ± 1.1 ml/mmHg (p < 0.001). The comparison of arterial compliance values estimated by peripheral bioimpedance and by echocardiography showed acceptable precision with a mean absolute error = 0.1 and a mean percentage error = 8.51%. Arterial compliance is a potentially useful hemodynamic parameter that could be successfully used to detect several diseases and as a predictor of future heart disease.