Design of a novel PWV-Varying Arterial Simulator for biomedical applications: a preliminary study

The increasing trend of cardiovascular diseases recently led to a growing interest in evaluating methods and systems to diagnose and prevent them. Nowadays, one of the key indexes used to assess the health status of the cardiovascular tree is the Pulse Wave Velocity (PWV) which is strictly related to the mechanical and geometrical characteristics of blood vessels. It is currently measured as the ratio between the distance of two transducers located on the human body and the time the pulse takes to travel along the two chosen sites. Unfortunately, to date, the current measurement devices employed show a limited accuracy in PWV assessment, especially due to distance inaccuracy. The development of arterial simulators could potentially improve the current measurement systems accuracy by means of a better calibration. Despite the fact that many systems have been developed through time, they mainly focus on different aspects regarding the relationship between PWV and meaningful hemodynamic quantities rather than trying to provide a PWV measurement reference to test currently available devices. This results in a lack of information on the design of an in vitro experimental set-up specifically able to vary PWV according to different adjustable mechanical characteristics. In such a context, the present study aims at providing a numerical simulation, based on a previously developed mathematical model, as a next step for the design of a novel experimental set-up, constituted by an elastic tube as aortic surrogate (AS), able to simulate a desired PWV range according to different AS inner and outer pressures conditions.