Feed-forward active contour analysis for improved brachial artery reactivity testing

Brachial flow-mediated dilation by continuous monitoring of arterial cross-section with ultrasound imaging

Objective

Impairment of flow-mediated dilation of the brachial artery is a marker of endothelial dysfunction and often predisposes atherosclerosis and cardiovascular events. In this study, we propose a user-guided automated approach for monitoring arterial cross-section during hyperemic response to improve reproducibility and sensitivity of flow-mediated dilation.

Material and methods

Ultrasound imaging of the brachial artery was performed in 11 volunteers in cross-sectional and in 5 volunteers in longitudinal view. During each examination, images were recorded continuously before and after inducing ischemia. Time-dilation curves of the brachial lumen cross-section were measured by user-guided automated segmentation of brachial images with the feed-forward active contour (FFAC) algorithm. %FMD was determined by the ratio of peak dilation to the baseline value. Each measurement was repeated twice in two sessions 1 h apart on the same arm to evaluate the reproducibility of the measurements. The intra-subject variation in flow-mediated dilation between two sessions (subject-specific) and inter-group variation in flow-mediated dilation with all the subjects within a session grouped together (group-specific) were measured for FFAC. The FFAC measurements were compared with the conventional diameter measurements made using echo tracking in longitudinal views.

Results

Flow-mediated dilation values for cross-sectional area were greater than those measured by diameter dilation: 33.1% for cross-sectional area compared to 22.5% for diameter. Group-specific flow-mediated dilation measurements for cross-sectional area were highly reproducible: 33.2% vs. 33.0% (p > 0.05) with coefficient of variation CV of 0.4%. The group-specific flow-mediated dilations measured by echo tracking for the two sessions were 21.1 vs. 23.9% with CV of 9%. Subject-specific CV for cross-sectional area by FFAC was 10% ± 2% versus 24% ± 10% for the conventional approach. Using correlation as a metric of evaluation also showed better performance for cross-sectional imaging: correlation coefficient, R, between two sessions for cross-sectional area was 0.92 versus 0.72 for the conventional approach based on diameter measurements.

Conclusion

Peak dilation area measured by continuous automated monitoring of cross-sectional area of the brachial artery provides more reproducible and higher-sensitivity measurement of flow-mediated dilation compared to the conventional approach of using vascular diameter measured using longitudinal imaging.