An Oscillometry-Based Approach for Measuring Blood Flow of Brachial Arteries

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Although the oscillometric method has been widely used to measure arterial systolic and diastolic blood pressures, its potential for arterial blood flow measurement is still remained to be explored. Thus, the aim of the study was to noninvasively determine the arterial artery blood flow using an oscillometric blood flow measurement system. The system consisted of an elastic cuff, an airpumping motor, a releaser valve, a pressure transducer, and an airflow meter. To build a nonlinear air cuff model, we detected the pumped airflow into the cuff and the cuff pressure using the airflow meter and pressure transducer during the inflation period, respectively. During the deflation period, only the pressure transducer was used to record the cuff pressure. Based on the air cuff model, the oscillometric blood flow waveform could be obtained by integrating the oscillometric pressure waveform. We compared the derived artery blood flow from the maximum amplitude of the oscillometric blood flow waveform with the Dopplerbased blood flow calculated with diameters and blood velocities of the brachial arteries in 32 subjects undergoing diagnostic evaluation for peripheral arterial embolism. A linear regression coefficient of r = 0.72 was found between the oscillometry- and Dopplerbased blood flow measurements for the 32 subjects. In conclusion, the oscillometric method can be applied to quantitatively measure the blood flow through a brachial artery.KeywordsOscillometryBlood flowCuff modeDopplerBrachial artery