Biomarker of endothelial function for medical prognosis of cardiovascular risk

• Main Author: Loo, Kah Eng
• Other Authors: Goh Wang Ling
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/67615
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Endothelial function has been found to result from or lead to numerous cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension, atherosclerosis, diabetes, and coronary artery disease, among others. With almost 30% of Singapore’s population suffering from cardiovascular diseases, the number of people experiencing endothelial dysfunction is extremely significant. This project looks into offering a financially accessible test for endothelial function, using the pulse wave amplitude (PWA), and simple sensors and circuits. Current tests such as ultrasound flow-mediated dilation (FMD) and pulse amplitude tonometry (PAT) are both extremely costly but also operator dependent, limiting mass access to such tests. A PWA sensing device is designed and built using piezoelectric sensors, signal conditioning circuitry and the NI MyRIO data acquisition device. NI LabVIEW graphical coding is used to code the algorithm for this purpose. Volunteers are sought to participate in 2 separate sessions for data collection purposes. Data collected from the device are then processed using statistical methods such as hypothesis testing. It was found that the PWA sensing device had a high rate of repeatability (>95%) within each subject and was able to obtain clear signals similar to that obtained via PAT devices offered by commercialized companies. No remarkable differences in PWA were noted between males and females, regardless of blood pressure. It is recommended that the device be further tested for operator dependency.