Apparatus for providing indices of elasticity or stiffness of an artery

An ultrasonic Doppler apparatus for measuring elasticity and stiffness of an artery at a single measurement location about an artery, comprising:

• a flow velocity detecting unit for emitting sound waves about the location and adapted to detect a plurality of blood flow velocities at the location of the artery in response to emitted soundwaves;
• an automatic capture and condition unit having digital memory coupled to receive flow velocity data from the plurality of blood flow velocities, said automatic capture and condition unit adapted to extract, store in the digital memory, and condition a flow velocity waveform utilizing the stored flow velocity data so as to provide a conditioned flow velocity waveform related to the detected plurality blood flow velocities, wherein the conditioned flow velocity waveform is a waveform having a single-value, at each instant in time on the waveform, smoothly varying, instant to instant;
• a data point extraction unit adapted to receive the conditioned flow velocity waveform and automatically capture from the conditioned waveform a local maximum velocity of pulse flow velocity V2 at a time T2, and a-local minimum velocity of flow velocity V3 at a time T3;
• and,
• a flow velocity parameter compute unit adapted to receive information processed by the data point extraction unit for automatically calculating a damped resonant frequency (DRF), a damping coefficient (DC) and a natural resonant frequency (NRF), related to the flow velocity waveform, in dependence upon a difference in the time between T3 and T2 and an absolute value of the ratio of V3 to V2, wherein the NRF is a measure of artery elasticity at the location in the artery, wherein NRF is related to pulse wave velocity (PWV) at the location, and wherein pulse wave velocity is an index of arterial stiffness at the location of the artery.