Extraction of Breathing Signal and Suppression of Its Effects in Oscillometric Blood Pressure Measurement

• Published in: IEEE transactions on instrumentation and measurement Vol. 60; no. 5; pp. 1741 - 1750
• Main Authors: Silu Chen, Bolic, Miodrag, Groza, Voicu Z, Dajani, Hilmi R, Batkin, Izmail, Rajan, Sreeraman
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.05.2011; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Adaptive filters; Biomedical monitoring; Blood pressure; Breathing; breathing signal extraction; breathing signal suppression; Data mining; Electrocardiography; Estimates; Fluctuation; Frequency estimation; Frequency modulation; homomorphic filter; Instrumentation; oscillometric blood pressure measurement; Pressure measurement; Signal processing; Waveforms
• ISSN: 0018-9456; 1557-9662
• DOI: 10.1109/TIM.2010.2092874

Breathing causes fluctuations in blood pressure and contributes to variations in blood pressure estimates. In order to reduce the variability in the blood pressure estimates induced by breathing, either the breathing signal should be removed from the oscillometric blood pressure signal, or its effects should be suppressed. This paper presents a hybrid method that combines homomorphic and adaptive signal processing techniques to extract the breathing signal from the oscillometric signal with or without a simultaneously recorded electrocardiogram (ECG). The quality of the extracted breathing signal and the depth of breathing are assessed using the reference breathing signals. The breathing signals extracted using the accompanying ECG signal were found to be superior in quality compared to the ones extracted from the oscillometric waveform. The blood pressure estimates were evaluated before and after the breathing suppression techniques were implemented. As a result of the breathing suppression, the fluctuation of the systolic and diastolic blood pressure estimates obtained from a database of 85 healthy subjects is reduced.