About VESPA
Building India’s Vascular Health Map
Project VESPA is India’s first and largest multicentre initiative to map vascular health across diverse populations. It aims to understand vascular health at scale and in context. Each participant provides a standardized multimodal profile, creating a multidimensional dataset linking early vascular health markers with clinical, metabolic, and population factors.
A key scientific goal is to establish India-specific reference values and normograms for early vascular health markers. Vascular health varies by age, sex, ethnicity, geography, lifestyle, and cardiometabolic status, and reference values from other populations may not reflect India’s diversity.
From Technology to
Population Scale Research
VESPA builds on over a decade of vascular health technology development and translational research at Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) and the Healthcare Technology Innovation Centre (HTIC), IIT Madras.
40+
Participants
100+
Research Studies
150+
Publications
At its core is ARTSENS®, a patented image-free ultrasound technology that enables accessible and scalable assessment of vascular aging. The platform measures key vascular health markers such as arterial stiffness, aortic pulse wave velocity, central and brachial blood pressures, and vascular age using a portable, field-ready platform.
ARTSENS addresses the critical limitations of conventional vascular assessment systems, which are often costly, operator-dependent, and limited to specialist settings. It consolidates multiple vascular aging measurements into a single platform suitable for community and high-throughput research.
40+
Participants
100+
Research Studies
150+
Publications
Bringing Vascular Health Research to the Community
Every VESPA screening camp brings research closer to the people it aims to serve. From clinical measurements to vascular assessments, each camp is a step toward understanding vascular health across India.
Partners
Built Through Collaboration
The research and development of ARTSENS® has been supported by IIT Madras, the Healthcare Technology Innovation Centre (HTIC), the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), and several other government and industry partners.
VESPA is now scaling into a national vascular-health programme, supported by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funding from Premji Invest and a growing network of clinical, academic, community, and industry partners.
Team
Leadership
Principal Investigators
Dr. Jayaraj Joseph
Dr. Mohanasankar Sivaprakasam
Co-Principal Investigators
Dr. Nabeel P. M.
Dr. Raj Kiran V.
Clinical Leads
Dr. Jagadeesh Guntur
Mr. Shankar M.
Mr. Mohammed Raiyyan
Our Vision
To build a population-scale understanding of vascular health across India and translate this evidence into earlier, more precise, and more equitable cardiovascular prevention.