A virtual instrument for real time in vivo measurement of carotid artery compliance.

A new virtual instrument for real time, non invasive measurement of carotid artery compliance is proposed. The instrument is a reliable, compact and low cost alternative to the conventional ultrasound scanner and wall tracking system for carotid artery compliance measurement. The measurement system uses an ultrasound pulse echo method to probe the carotid artery. The reflected echoes are processed using Hilbert transform techniques. Peak detection and echo tracking are implemented in LabVIEW. A comparison is done between manual and automatic method of echo identification. The instrument gives a display of the variation of carotid diameter in real time and calculates the various estimates of arterial compliance from the analyzed data. The capability of the instrument to accurately determine arterial compliance measures is demonstrated by experiments performed on human subjects.