title: Smartphone-based Continuous Blood Pressure Measurement Using Pulse Transit Time.
abstract: The increasing availability of low cost and easy to use personalized medical monitoring devices has opened the door for new and innovative methods of health monitoring to emerge. Cuff-less and continuous methods of measuring blood pressure are particularly attractive as blood pressure is one of the most important measurements of long term cardiovascular health. Current methods of noninvasive blood pressure measurement are based on inflation and deflation of a cuff with some effects on arteries where blood pressure is being measured. This inflation can also cause patient discomfort and alter the measurement results. In this work, a mobile application was developed to collate the PhotoPlethysmoGramm (PPG) waveform provided by a pulse oximeter and the electrocardiogram (ECG) for calculating the pulse transit time. This information is then indirectly related to the user's systolic blood pressure. The developed application successfully connects to the PPG and ECG monitoring devices using Bluetooth wireless connection and stores the data onto an online server. The pulse transit time is estimated in real time and the user's systolic blood pressure can be estimated after the system has been calibrated. The synchronization between the two devices was found to pose a challenge to this method of continuous blood pressure monitoring. However, the implemented continuous blood pressure monitoring system effectively serves as a proof of concept. This combined with the massive benefits that an accurate and robust continuous blood pressure monitoring system would provide indicates that it is certainly worthwhile to further develop this system.
authors.affiliation: School of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Hamid
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Gholamhosseini
authors.affiliation: School of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Andries
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Meintjes
authors.affiliation: School of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Mirza
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Baig
authors.affiliation: School of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden.
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Linden
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001795:Blood Pressure Determination / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D018660:Blood Pressure Monitoring, Ambulatory; D002138:Calibration; D004562:Electrocardiography; D006801:Humans; D010092:Oximetry / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D063177:Pulse Wave Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D000068997:Smartphone; D000076251:Wearable Electronic Devices