Age dependence of arterial pulse wave parameters extracted from dynamic blood pressure and blood volume pulse waves

Atherosclerosis is a significant cause of mortality in the aged population, and it affects arterial wall properties causing differences in measured arterial pulse wave (PW). In this study, both dynamic arterial blood pressure PWs and blood volume PWs are analyzed. The PWs are recorded noninvasively from multiple measurement points from the upper and lower limbs from 52 healthy (22-90-year-old) volunteers without known cardiovascular diseases. For each signal, various parameters earlier proposed in the literature are computed, and 25 different novel parameters are formed by combining these parameters. The results are evaluated in terms of age and heart rate (HR) dependence of the parameters. In general, the results show that 14 out of 25 tested combined parameters have stronger age dependence than any of the individual parameters. The highest obtained linear correlation coefficients between the age and combined parameter and individual parameter equal to 0.85 (p < 10-4) and 0.79 (p < 10-4), respectively. Most of the combined parameters have also improved discrimination capability when classifying the test subjects into different age groups. This is a promising result for further studies, but indicate that the age dependence of the parameters must be taken into account in further studies with atherosclerotic patients.