Non-contact Pulse Wave Velocity Assessment Using Optical Methods

Abstract

The clinical relevance of pulse wave velocity (PWV), as an indicator of cardiac risk associated to arterial stiffness, has gained clinical relevance over the last years. Optic sensors are an attractive instrumental solution for this type of measurement due to their truly non-contact operation capability, which has the potential of an interference free measurement. The nature of the optically originated signals, however, poses new challenges to the designer, either at the probe design level as at the signal processing required to extract the timing information that yields PWV. In this work we describe the construction of two prototype optical probes and discuss their evaluation using three algorithms for pulse transit time (PTT) evaluation. Results, obtained in a dedicated test bench, that is also described, demonstrate the possibility of measuring pulse transit times as short as 1ms with less than 1% error.