2-DIMENSIONAL TORTUOSITY OF THE SUPERFICIAL FEMORAL-ARTERY IN EARLY ATHEROSCLEROSIS

Tortuosity of an artery can disturb fluid mechanics and cause flow sep aration, which might in turn promote atherogenesis. This study discuss es theoretically several quantitative measures of arterial tortuosity and curvature in two dimensions and tests them with computations from digitized femoral arteriograms. When reproducibility, sensitivity to s caling and computational procedure, and agreement between the measures were all taken into account, the total curvature and distance factor were considered the most suitable measures. Significant correlations w ere found between tortuosity and atherosclerosis measures, but the int erpretation of this finding is not straightforward.