Estimating Blood Pressure via Artificial Neural Networks Based on Measured Photoplethysmography Waveforms

A new approach for estimating blood pressure from photoplethysmography (PPG) signals is developed using artificial neural networks (ANNs). Blood Pressure is one of the most important parameters that can provide valuable information of personal healthcare. A reflective photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor module is developed for the cuffless, non-invasive blood pressure (BP) measurement based on PPG at wrist on radial artery. Blood Pressure is in a relation with the pulse duration of the PPG. In this paper, we propose to estimate blood pressure from PPG signal by using artificial neural networks approach. This is the first reported study to consider varied temporal periods of PPG waveforms as features for application of artificial neural networks (ANNs) to estimate blood pressure. We compared our results with those measured using a commercial cuff-based digital blood pressure measuring device and obtained encouraging results of overall SBP and DBP regression (R) as 0.99115.