Local pressure estimation using elastography and ultrasensitive pulsed-wave Doppler

The measurement of blood flow pressure is of great interest in clinical applications, as it is used as a biomarker to diagnose and monitor cardiovascular disease. Local pressure could also be a biomarker for the diagnosis of other types of pathologies such as chronic allograft nephropathy. In recent years, noninvasive ultrasound (US)-based approaches have been proposed to measure intravascular pressure in large arteries by combining pulse wave velocity (PWV) measurements and vessel diameter variation. These works were tested under in vitro and in vivo conditions, thus demonstrating the feasibility of US-based approaches to estimate local blood pressure. The aim of this work is to evaluate a method that combines two ultrafast plane wave imaging approaches used in the clinic, shear wave elastography (SWE) and ultrafast pulsed wave Doppler (uPWD), to estimate local pressure in the vessel wall, which is determined as the difference between the pressures at peak systolic and end diastole.