title: Cuff-Free Blood Pressure Estimation Using Pulse Transit Time and Heart Rate.
abstract: It has been reported that the pulse transit time (PTT), the interval between the peak of the R-wave in electrocardiogram (ECG) and the fingertip photoplethysmogram (PPG), is related to arterial stiffness, and can be used to estimate the systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP). This phenomenon has been used as the basis to design portable systems for continuously cuff-less blood pressure measurement, benefiting numerous people with heart conditions. However, the PTT-based blood pressure estimation may not be sufficiently accurate because the regulation of blood pressure within the human body is a complex, multivariate physiological process. Considering the negative feedback mechanism in the blood pressure control, we introduce the heart rate (HR) and the blood pressure estimate in the previous step to obtain the current estimate. We validate this method using a clinical database. Our results show that the PTT, HR and previous estimate reduce the estimated error significantly when compared to the conventional PTT estimation approach (p<0.05).
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Ruiping
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurological Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Wenyan
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Jia
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Zhi-Hong
authors.initials: ZH
authors.lastname: Mao
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Robert J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Sclabassi
authors.affiliation: Computational Diagnostics, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA.
authors.forename: Mingui
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sun
keywords: ECG signal; arterial blood pressure; fingertip Photoplethysmogram; pulse transit time