Development of a Continuous Blood Pressure Measurement and Cardiovascular Multi-Indicator Platform for Asian Populations by Using a Back Propagation Neural Network and Dual Photoplethysmography Sensor Signal Acquisition Technology

Abstract

This study proposed a measurement platform for continuous blood pressure estimation based on dual photoplethysmography (PPG) sensors and a back propagation neural network (BPNN) that can be used for continuous and rapid measurement of blood pressure and analysis of cardiovascular-related indicators. The proposed platform measured the signal changes in PPG and converted them into physiological indicators, such as pulse transit time (PTT), pulse wave velocity (PWV), perfusion index (PI), heart rate (HR), and pulse wave analysis (PWA); these indicators were then fed into the BPNN to calculate blood pressure. The hardware of the experiment comprised 2 PPG components (i.e., Raspberry Pi 3 Model B and analog-to-digital converter [MCP3008]), which were connected using a serial peripheral interface. The BPNN algorithm converted the stable dual PPG signals acquired from the strictly standardized experimental process into various physiological indicators as input parameters and finally obtained the systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP). To increase the robustness of the BPNN model, this study input data of 100 Asian participants into the training database, including those with and without cardiovascular disease, each with a proportion of approximately 50%. The experimental results revealed that the mean and standard deviation of SBP were 2.23 +/- 2.24 mmHg, with a mean squared error of 3.15 mmHg. The mean and standard deviation of DBP was 3.5 +/- 3.53 mmHg, with a mean squared error of 4.96 mmHg. The proposed real-time blood pressure measurement system exhibited a mean accuracy of 98.22% and 95.58% for SBP and DBP, respectively.