Traditional Chinese Medicine Pulse Diagnosis on a Smartphone Using Skin Impedance at Acupoints: A Feasibility Study

In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), pulse diagnosis is one of the most important methods for diagnosis. A pulse can be felt by applying firm fingertip pressure to the skin where the arteries travel. The pulse diagnosis has become an important tool not only for TCM practitioners but also for sever...

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Published inSensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 20; no. 16; p. 4618
Main Authors Lan, Kun-Chan, Litscher, Gerhard, Hung, Te-Hsuan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland MDPI AG 17.08.2020
MDPI
Subjects
Acupuncture
Acupuncture Points
Electric Impedance
Feasibility Studies
galvanic skin response
Humans
Measuring instruments
Medicine, Chinese Traditional
Neural networks
photoplethysmography
pulse diagnosis instrument
resonance theory
Sensors
Signal processing
Skin
Smartphone
Smartphones
Traditional Chinese medicine
smartphone
photoplethysmography
galvanic skin response
resonance theory
pulse diagnosis instrument
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ISSN1424-8220
1424-8220
DOI10.3390/s20164618

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Summary:In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), pulse diagnosis is one of the most important methods for diagnosis. A pulse can be felt by applying firm fingertip pressure to the skin where the arteries travel. The pulse diagnosis has become an important tool not only for TCM practitioners but also for several areas of Western medicine. Many pulse measuring devices have been proposed to obtain objective pulse conditions. In the past, pulse diagnosis instruments were single-point sensing methods, which missed a lot of information. Later, multi-point sensing instruments were developed that resolved this issue but were much higher in cost and lacked mobility. In this article, based on the concept of sensor fusion, we describe a portable low-cost system for TCM pulse-type estimation using a smartphone connected to two sensors, including one photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor and one galvanic skin response (GSR) sensor. As a proof of concept, we collected five-minute PPG pulse information and skin impedance on 24 acupoints from 80 subjects. Based on these collected data, we implemented a fully connected neural network (FCN), which was able to provide high prediction accuracy (>90%) for patients with a TCM wiry pulse.
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ISSN:1424-8220
1424-8220
DOI:10.3390/s20164618