Because measurement of arterial stiffness is highly dependent on blood pressure (BP), methods independent of BP are required. Ultrafast echography (UFE, Supersonic Imagine, Aix-en-Provence, France) makes use of very fast sampling rate (up to 10kHz), so transient events such as pressure wave arrival can be tracked. This method has never been tested against classical echotracking (Artlab, Esaote, Maastricht, NL) and carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cf-PWV, Sphygmocor, AtCor, Sydney, Australia).

We included 56 subjects, 27 normotensives (NT) and 29 essential hypertensives (HT), matched for age and sex. We optimized UFE algorithms for pressure wave detection and tracking, for both foot of the wave (FW) and dicrotic notch (DN) PWV.

Feasibility appears good (FW: 78%, DN: 96%). The relations of arterial stiffness with age and blood pressure were stronger for echotracking and cf-PWV than for UFE. DN wave fronts appeared better associated with cf-PWV (r=0.32, p<0.001) and carotid PWV (r=0.47, p<0.001). FW was not associated with cf-PWV nor with carotid PWV. The residuals between DN and carotid PWV were not associated with BP or age. Similar associations between DN and cf-PWV/carotid PWV were found in NT and HT.

After optimizing algorithms for wave front identification and tracking, UFE appears as a promising technique for assessing arterial stiffness. DN showed the best associations with echotracking, whereas FW did not provide meaningful data. As previously shown by Hermeling et al (J Hypertens 2008 and 2009), FW is not appropriate for local stiffness measurement likely because of very early wave reflections.