Basic Study for Stress Analysis Using an Unconstrained BCG Monitoring System

Heart related diseases mainly caused by heavy work load and increasing stress in human daily life. Therefore, researches on mobile healthcare monitoring for daily life has been carried out. Notably, wearable healthcare monitoring system which has least restriction has been tried to provide an emergency alert of abnormal heart rate. In this study, we developed chair type unconstrained BCG measurement system which able to perform continuous heart status monitoring at the office and daily life in the unconstrained way. Furthermore, adaptive threshold is used to detect the heart rate from BCG signals. The HRV(heart rate variability) is calculated from heart rate interval. ECG signal measured using conventional method and BCG signal measured using unconstraint system are carried out simultaneously for the purpose of performance evaluation. From the comparison result, BCG signal shows a similar heart beat characteristic as ECG signal. This proves the possibility of practical implementation of unconstraint healthcare monitoring system. In addition, medical examination like valsalva maneuver is performed to observe the changes in HRV due to stress. By performing valsalva maneuver, heart is said to be placed under an artificial physical stress condition. Under this artificial physical stress condition, the time and frequency domain of HRV parameters are evaluated.