Dr. Wilmer Nichols, PhD., is Emeritus Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine in the School of Medicine at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. His career has been dedicated to the investigation of structure and function of the heart and arterial system in age and arterial disease. He has published over 200 articles in peer reviewed journals; books include the 6th edition of McDonald's Blood Flow in Arteries. Among his many awards are Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Artery Society of Europe and the North American Artery Society.

Dr. Michael O'Rourke, MD, DSc., is Professor of Medicine (Emeritus) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and a Cardiologist at St. Vincent's Hospital, Sydney. His basic research training was in arterial hemodynamics, working on experimental animals and computer models with Michael Taylor (Sydney) and William Milnor (Baltimore). He has published over 500 articles in peer reviewed journals; books include the 6th edition (2011) of McDonald's Blood Flow in Arteries. Recent research is into cardiovascular aging, using new methods of pulse waveform analysis to detect, explain and treat ill-effects on the heart and brain from midlife in asymptomatic subjects.

Dr. Elazer Edelman, MD, PhD., is the Edward J. Poitras Professor in Medical Engineering and Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts where he directs the Institute of Medical Engineering and Science. He is also Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a cardiac intensive care unit cardiologist at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Dr. Charalambos Vlachopoulos MD is Professor of Cardiology at the 1st Department of Cardiology, Hippokration Hospital, University of Athens Medical School with clinical interests in hypertension and interventional cardiology. Professor Vlachopoulos is currently Chairman of the European Society of Cardiology Working Group "Peripheral Circulation" and President of the Artery Society. Together with Wilmer Nichols and Michael O'Rourke he has authored the 6th Edition of "McDonald's Blood Flow in Arteries". He has lectured extensively in international conferences. He is a member of the Board of Hypertension, Artery Research, and Hellenic Journal of Cardiology and a Reviewer for numerous Medical Journals.

1 Introduction

2 Anatomy of the heart and circulation

3 The nature of flow of a liquid

4 Properties of the arterial wall: theory and practice

5 Endothelial cells and hemodynamics

6 General principles for measuring arterial waves

7 Pulsatile pressure-flow relations

8 Arterial wave reflections

9 Contours of pressure and flow waves in arteries

10 Principles of recording and analysis of arterial waveforms

11 Vascular impedance

12 Coupling of the left ventricle with the systemic circulation: implications to cardiac failure

13 The pulmonary circulation and impedance

14 The Specialized Circulations in Susceptible Tissues

15 Aging

16 Hypertension

17 Interpretation of blood pressure in epidemiological studies and clinical trials

18 Arterial biomarkers

19 Arteriosclerosis and Atherosclerosis

20 Specific arterial disease

21 Generalized and metabolic disease

22 Emergence of therapeutic strategies

23 Endovascular implants

24 Cardiovascular Effects of Exercise

25 Central arterial pressure

26 Lifestyle and environment

27 Arterial pressure waveform analysis