Novel Smart Assistance System for Arteriosclerosis Evaluation

Arteriosclerosis is a cardiovascular disease that can cause calcification, sclerosis, stenosis, or obstruction of blood vessels and may further cause abnormal peripheral blood perfusion or other complications. In clinical settings, several approaches, such as computed tomography angiography and magnetic resonance angiography, can be used to evaluate arteriosclerosis status. However, these approaches are relatively expensive and require an experienced operator and often the injection of a contrast agent. In this article, a novel smart assistance system based on near-infrared spectroscopy was proposed that can noninvasively assess blood perfusion and thus indicate arteriosclerosis status. In this system, a wireless peripheral blood perfusion monitoring device simultaneously monitors changes in hemoglobin parameters and the cuff pressure applied by a sphygmomanometer. Several indexes extracted from changes in hemoglobin parameters and cuff pressure were defined and can be used to estimate blood perfusion status. A neural network model for arteriosclerosis evaluation was constructed using the proposed system. The relationship between the blood perfusion indexes and arteriosclerosis status was investigated, and the neural network model for arteriosclerosis evaluation was validated. Experimental results indicated that the differences in many blood perfusion indexes for different groups were significant and that the neural network model could effectively evaluate arteriosclerosis status (accuracy = 80.26%). By using a sphygmomanometer, the model can be employed for simple arteriosclerosis screening and blood pressure measurements. The model offers real-time noninvasive measurement, and the system is relatively inexpensive and easy to operate.