Arterial blood pressure feature estimation using photoplethysmography

• Published in: Computers in biology and medicine Vol. 102; pp. 104 - 111
• Main Authors: Soltan Zadi, Armin, Alex, Raichel, Zhang, Rong, Watenpaugh, Donald E., Behbehani, Khosrow
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Ltd 01.11.2018; Elsevier Limited
• Subjects: Accuracy; Adult; Arteries - physiology; Autoregressive moving-average models; Autoregulation; Blood Pressure; Blood Pressure Determination - methods; Breathing; Dependence; Diastole; Electrocardiography; Error analysis; Estimates; Estimation; Female; Fitness; Hemodynamics; Humans; Male; Maneuvers; Measurement methods; Methods; Modeling; Models, Cardiovascular; Models, Statistical; Photoplethysmography - methods; Physiology; Reproducibility of Results; Researchers; Respiration; SaO2; Sensors; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; Sleep disorders; Supine position; Systole; Wavelet Analysis; Young Adult; Autoregulation; Sleep disorders; Estimation; SaO2; Blood pressure; Hemodynamics; Modeling
• ISSN: 0010-4825; 1879-0534
• DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2018.09.013

Continuous and noninvasive monitoring of blood pressure has numerous clinical and fitness applications. Current methods of continuous measurement of blood pressure are either invasive and/or require expensive equipment. Therefore, we investigated a new method for the continuous estimation of two main features of blood pressure waveform: systolic and diastolic pressures. The estimates were obtained from a photoplethysmography signal as input to the fifth order autoregressive moving average models. The performance of the method was evaluated using beat-to-beat full-wave blood pressure measurements from 15 young subjects, with no known cardiovascular disorder, in supine position as they breathed normally and also while they performed a breath-hold maneuver. The level of error in the estimates, as measured by the root mean square of the model residuals, was less than 5 mmHg during normal breathing and less than 8 mmHg during the breath-hold maneuver. The mean of model residuals both during normal breathing and breath-hold maneuvers was considered to be less than 3.2 mmHg. The dependency of the accuracy of the estimates on the subject data was assessed by comparing the modeling errors for the 15 subjects. Less than 1% of the models showed significant differences (p < 0.05) from the other models, which indicates a high level of consistency among the models. •Proposed Models accurately estimate blood pressure from photoplethysmography (PPG).•Breath-hold maneuvers rapidly raise blood pressure and change PPG.•Rapid blood pressure changes due to breath hold are accurately estimated from PPG.•Blood pressure features are accurately estimated from PPG during normal respiration.