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A PPG Sensor For Continuous Cuffless Blood Pressure Monitoring With Self-Adaptive Signal Processing

This document describes a portable PPG sensor designed for continuous cuffless blood pressure monitoring with self-adaptive signal processing. The sensor detects blood volume changes using photoplethysmography to estimate blood pressure. It consists of light emitting diodes, a photo detector, and signal processing chips. Experimental results on 27 subjects found correlation coefficients between 0.89-0.98 for systolic and diastolic blood pressure compared to a commercial monitor, and the sensor was able to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of PPG signals by over 15%.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
67 views4 pages

A PPG Sensor For Continuous Cuffless Blood Pressure Monitoring With Self-Adaptive Signal Processing

This document describes a portable PPG sensor designed for continuous cuffless blood pressure monitoring with self-adaptive signal processing. The sensor detects blood volume changes using photoplethysmography to estimate blood pressure. It consists of light emitting diodes, a photo detector, and signal processing chips. Experimental results on 27 subjects found correlation coefficients between 0.89-0.98 for systolic and diastolic blood pressure compared to a commercial monitor, and the sensor was able to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of PPG signals by over 15%.

Uploaded by

Gajab Bezzzati
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Applied System Innovation

IEEE-ICASI 2017 - Meen, Prior & Lam (Eds)

A PPG Sensor for Continuous Cuffless Blood Pressure Monitoring with Self-Adaptive
Signal Processing
Yung-Hua Kao1, a, Paul C.-P. Chao2, b and Chin-Long Wey3, c
1,2,3
Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, 300, Taiwan
a
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract The quality of PPG signals require increasing due to the


feature of BP estimation implicated precision AC/DC
A new portable PPG-BP device designed for continuously (amplitude) and PWV (time domain). Noisy PPG signals is
measuring blood pressure (BP) without a cuff is proposed in usually affected by the analog front end (AFE) circuitry,
this study. This continuous and long-time BP monitoring ambient light and motion artifact. Most electronic components
enabled herein by the proposed portable cuffless BP sensor. existed noise into the measured PPG signals. For instance, the
Towards the aforementioned goal, the sensor is designed LED driver introduces noise into the emitted light signal, the
capable of detecting in real time, non-invasively and poor ambient light impinges the PD and the patients
continuously the temporal intravascular blood volume change moves/shakes the position of the measurement. The poor PPG
based on the principle of photoplethysmograph (PPG) for signal is converted to a weak current by the PD, then the AFE
estimating BP. The hardware of the sensor consists mainly of readout circuit amplifies and filters the PPG signal such that the
light emitting diodes (LEDs) in wavelengths of 660 nm, a photo signal and noise are amplified together. The signal-to-noise
detectors (PD), and also signal processing chips to read output ratio (SNR) is reduced for amplifying every time. The AC
signals of the PD. The PD readout circuit includes a PD component of PPG is typically a very small part of overall
pre-amplifier, a band-pass filter, a programmable gain measured signal (often on the order of 1%), and then it easily be
amplifier (PGA), a microcontroller unit for calculation and a obscured with noise, this makes more difficult for digital signal
wireless module for communication. A laptop is also used to processing to estimate the BP [6] .
display continuous BPs and conducts statistical analysis and This work is dedicated to the methods and techniques based
displaying results. 27 subjects participated in the experimental on photoplethysmograph (PPG) signals for continuous and
validation, in which the obtained BPs are calibrated by and then non-invasive measurement of BP [7] . Increasing the SNR of
compared with the results from a commercial blood pressure PPG signal helps feature extraction by proposed self-adaptive
monitor by OMRON. The resultant signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) system for BP estimation.
is capable of rising more than 15%, correlation coefficient, R2,
for systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure Methodology
(DBP) are 0.89 and 0.98, respectively.
A new portable of PPG-BP device has been designed and
Key words: signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), photoplethysmograph implemented in a self-adaptive system. The algorithm of
(PPG), systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure self-adaptive system is conducted controlling the quality of
(DBP). PPG signal by MCU and laptop. The graphical user interface
(GUI) also has been developed on the laptop to alarm/record
Introduction the user status of blood pressure. This section describes in
detail the system of experimental setting, signal processing,
The continuous blood pressure (BP) is measured from a data analysis and computation algorithm of the proposed
signal called the photoplethysmograph (PPG) [1] . Green, red self-adaptive system.
or infrared light emitting diodes (LEDs) illuminate a skin/tissue
of patients, and the transmitted/reflected light is measured by a A. Hardware of self-adaptive system
photodetectors (PD) as shown in Fig. 1. According to Fig. 2 shows the entire self-adaptive system in block
Beer-Lambert law [2] , the measuring PPG signals contains the diagram. The light source of the LED reflected from the
static component (e.g. non-pulsatile blood, venous blood, skin, fingertip is absorbed by the PD. The wavelength of the LED
bone, etc.) that called a directing current (DC) and the dynamic used was 660 nm in red. The measured PD signal has a voltage
component (pulsatile blood) is implied an alternating current range of approximately 10 mV. This initial signal is very small
(AC). Estimating BP required consider AC and DC to calibrate with a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The AFE readout
diameter ratio of systolic and diastolic with the artery change circuit is designed, which contains a pre-amplifier to amplify
[3] ; on the other hand, the BP estimation also highly correlated the initial signal, a band-pass filter to remove noise and control
to pulse wave velocity (PWV) based on Bramwell-Hill the DC drift, a LED driver to tuning the illuminance for
equation [4] and Moens–Korteweg (M–K) equation [5] . different skin tissue measurement, a programmable gain

ISBN 978-1-5090-4897-7 - 357


Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Applied System Innovation
IEEE-ICASI 2017 - Meen, Prior & Lam (Eds)

27 Healthy Subjects

Light-emitting
Photo-detector
diode
(PD)
(LED)

PPG signal

Light adjusting
(AFE circuit)

Gain adjusting
Micro controller
unit
(MCU)

Auto-gain control
LED driver SPI bus
(AGC)

Fig. 1. Illustration of PPG Technology.


Wireless
amplifier (PGA) to auto tuning the output voltage of PPG module
signal to full-dynamic range. The following is a MCU to decide
the criterion of signal quality. The MCU also includes a 10 bits
SAR-ADC and a wireless module. The operating voltage for
whole circuitry is 3.3 V. The bandwidth of the pass band are set Laptop Gold standard
up as from 0.3 to 10 Hz. The range of adjustable gain for PGA
is from 60 to 80 dB. The output dynamic range are from 0.1 to BP algorithm
Commercial
device
3.2 V.

B. Data collection
The 27 healthy participants, 26 males and 1 females, the GUI display Calibration
(SBP, DBP, HR) algorithm
ages are approximately between 23 and 30 years, without the
cardiovascular diseases. All subjects are agreed sign the
consent form for participants. The experimental design was
Fig. 2. Block diagram of self-adaptive system with BP
approved by a committee of National Chiao Tung University.
measurement.
The experiment is conducted in an air-conditioned
laboratory, which the temperature as 26 °C. The experimental
setting requires a laptop to record the data, age, gender, height 3) Capture of signals in a complete cardiovascular cycle:
and weight; a commercial BP monitor (OMRON HEM-FM31 when the signal is no saturation and no outliers, the PPG
to provide the data calibration for correlating analysis; and a signal is collected in a complete cardiovascular cycle.
proposed PPG-BP device to capture the PPG signal. 4) Filtering and spectrum analysis: aiming for tuning the
base line (DC drift), removing the noises, and capturing
C. Signal Processing the fundamental tone.
Calculating BP herein is based on some features of the
measured PPG signals. These features are extracted by a 5) Peak detection: capturing the timings of PPG peaks:
self-adaptive algorithm and has to be of satisfactory quality for main peak, valleys and secondary peak.
accurate BP computation. Six criteria/acts given below are 6) Calculating pulse percussion duration (PPD) [8] : the
satisfied or executed to realize the self-adaptive signal time span between the percussion wave and dicrotic
processing for affirming quality PPG signals. wave.
1) Signal saturation: when the PPG signal exceeds the Fig. 3 shows the percussion wave (main peak) and dicrotic
operating range of voltage by the CMOS readout chip, wave (Secondary peak) peaks correspond to those resulted
causing the signal to be cut off, which should be avoided from the percussion (forward) wave from heart to the fingertip.
by gain adjusting by the adopted auto-gain control and The entire PPG waveform is well within non-saturated digital
light adjusting by the LED driver. dynamic range, while with a good SNR due to the designed
2) Signal outliers: Irregular pulse noise should be removed self-adaptive signal processing following the above 1-6.
the one cycle of PPG, then continue to capture the next
cycle. D. Data analysis

358 - ISBN 978-1-5090-4897-7


Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Applied System Innovation
IEEE-ICASI 2017 - Meen, Prior & Lam (Eds)

Fig. 4. Photo the experimental setup with self-adaptive system.

described in Eq. (2).

n( X iYi )  (X i )(Yi )


r , (2)
[nX i2  (X i ) 2 ][nYi 2  (Yi ) 2 ]

where X and Y represents the SBP/DBP of PPG-BP device and


SBP/DBP of HEM-FM31 device, respectively; n is the length
of data and The range of r is 0 to 1.
E. Blood Pressure algorithm
The BP algorithm is a calibration process proposed along
Fig. 3. Filtering technique with self-adaptive of signal processing. with usage of a cuff-type blood pressure monitor,
HEM-FM31calibration. According to the Bramwell-Hill
All the measured data were removed 0.3 to 10 Hz by equation [4] , the BP can be calculated by the known pulse
digital bandpass filtering based on the fast Fourier transform wave velocity (PWV), the density of blood, ρ, and the volume
(FFT) algorithm. The length of measured time for an of blood in artery, V, by
experiment was setting 32 seconds, then which was removed 2
seconds of initial time to prevent the bad signal (hands V ( SBP  DBP)
PWV  , (3)
shaking/moving). Finally, each data were recorded the 24,000  V
point by FFT in 30 seconds. The experiment was used the
where SBP as systolic blood pressure while DBP as diastolic
wavelength of 660 nm via the PPG-BP device to measuring.
blood pressure.
Estimating the SN ratio, the SNR value was computed for
On the other hand, PWV can be represented in terms of
each 30 seconds data. The SNR is defined as the ratio of
integration power (Psignal) on interest band, then the integration elastic modulus of artery, Ein, the thickness of the artery, h, the
power (Pnoise) on un-interest band, as shown in Eq. (1). radius of artery, γ, and the density of blood, ρ, by the
Moens-Korteweg equation [5] , i.e.,
Psignal
SNR (dB)  10 log10  , (1) E in h .
Pnoise PWV  (4)
2 r
where the P is the integrated power for the signal and noise
respectively. The interest band was average of measured Based on the derivation of Eqs. (3) and (4), the SBP and
fundamental tone via FFT spectrum, while the frequency was DBP is calibrated by PPG-BP device and HEM-FM31 [9]
typically near the heart rate (i.e., if heart rate was 60 bpm/1 Hz). [10] .
In order to evaluate the precision and direction of the
relationship between the proposed PPG-BP device and Experimental Results
commercial BP monitor, the Pearson correlation coefficient r
and scatter plot is applied. There are two types of correlations, A real-time GUI system created by the Matlab. It contains a
positive and negative. Due to SBP/DBP of PPG-BP devices personal information form, a calibration function, a continuous
also increases as SBP/DBP of HEM-FM31 increases, thus the signal display and an indicator of signal quality. In addition to
correlation between two devices should be positive. the above implemented functions, the GUI is equipped with
Calculating the correlation between two sets SBP/DBP is statistical analysis for users, and a storage unit to record results

ISBN 978-1-5090-4897-7 - 359


Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Applied System Innovation
IEEE-ICASI 2017 - Meen, Prior & Lam (Eds)

between SBP and DBP of correlation, the x-axis represents the


HEM-FM31 of SBP/DBP estimation, while the y-axis
represents the PPG-BP device of SBP/DBP. In this results, the
correlation of SBP/DBP is estimated, which the R2 are 0.89 and
0.98, respectively.

Conclusion
The PPG-BP device of self-adaptive system has developed
by this study. As above results, the signal processing can be
removed the noisy PPG signal, which the signal quality was
indicated to the more high SN ratio. It was able to help easy
capturing the PPG feature for BP measurement. According to
Bramwell-Hill and Moens-Korteweg equation to derivation the
SBP and DBP with HEM-FM31 calibration. This research
develops an accurate estimates on BPs by the continuous
PPG-BP device on self-adaptive system.
Fig. 5. Increasing the percentage of the SNR.
Acknowledgement

This work was supported in part by the Novel


Bioengineering and Technological Approaches to Solve Two
Major Health Problems in Taiwan sponsored by the Taiwan
Ministry of Science and Technology Academic Excellence
Program under Grant Number: MOST 106-2633-B-009-001

References

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360 - ISBN 978-1-5090-4897-7

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