An objective measure of carotid disease based on a multiparameter approach

Atherosclerosis is a multifactorial disease that affects a significant number of people during their lifetime. It is a pathology clinically silent for years that develops with a gradual thickening of the vessel walls and a consecutive formation of plaque. This is the cause of several dangerous conditions such as ischemic stroke, the most common cause of stroke in middle-aged people. To avoid and reduce these events a continuos and meticulous monitoring of patients with any carotid diseases is necessary. This paper presents an objective measure of the progression of a carotid patology. An index capable of distinguishing between the initial state of thickening of the carotid arterial walls and the successive presence of more serious plaque has been defined. The presence of thickening or plaque is estimated by evaluating Heart Rate Variability. This is a non-invasive approach, able to estimate characteristic parameters in an easy and efficient way, constituting an accurate and optimum instrument for a real-time continuous monitoring. Locally Weighted Learning has been used to automatically find a relationship between these parameters and the presence of a disorder, tested on an available dataset.