Arterial stiffness plays an important role in the development of cardiovascular diseases and is increasingly used in clinical practice as a biomarker of disease’s progression. Pulse wave velocity (PWV) is considered a state of the art surrogate marker for arterial stiffness assessment. Aim of this study was to compare regional and local (aortic and carotid) PWV values obtained with different techniques and to test feasibility of creating a dataset with these non-invasive PWV measurements.

Eight young healthy subjects (31.2±7.9 years, 50% males, BMI 23.1±3.3 kg/m²) have been recruited. For each subject carotid-femoral PWV (cfPWV) measurements were obtained by applanation tonometry while carotid stiffness (CS) values were calculated from common carotid ultrasound images analysed by contour tracking techniques and Bramwhell-Hill equation; carotid pressures measurements were estimated by local applanation tonometry. Two different sequences (at aortic and carotid level) of velocity-encoded MRI images were acquired for each subject: local aortic and carotid PWV (aPWV and cPWV respectively) values were calculated from these images using QA method.

Comparison between MRI aPWV (mean: 4.78±1.41 m/s) values and cfPWV (mean: 7.76±0.90 m/s) values showed a good correlation (R²=0.73). MRI cPWV (mean 1.99±0.74 m/s) values were positively correlated (R²=0.90) with CS (mean: 4.88±0.86 m/s) values and showed a lower correlation with cfPWV ones (R²=0.14).

In conclusion, this preliminary study shows a multi-technique approach for regional and local PWV calculation aimed to realize a reference database that could be used when developing and validating new algorithms and techniques for PWV evaluation.