Peripheral arterial disease is one of most frequent and important diseases of modern time, but sometimes doesn’t receive enough attention from primary care physicians. The reason for that lies in poor diagnostic tools that are currently available. Measuring ankle brachial index, indicator of peripheral arterial disease, with the gold standard Doppler ultrasonic method is too complicated and time consuming. To avoid this problems we would need to develop a diagnostic tool, which would be completely automatic, fast and easy to use.
In this thesis development of such an instrument – automatic ankle brachial index measuring device – is described from beginning to final product. Thesis starts with medical background and description of current technology, and continues with description of development process, feasibility study and input requirements. Later we describe in details how device was developed and how it works. Explanation is divided in four parts: electronics, mechanics, software, and measurement algorithm. In the end we present device testing and its clinical use.
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