Wearable Millimeter-Wave Device for Contactless Measurement of Arterial Pulses

Wearable monitors for measuring vital signs such as blood pressure will greatly impact the medical field. This work presents a millimeter-wave, radar-based system for performing accurate measurements of arterial pulse waveforms without contacting the region that is pulsing. Electromagnetic and radar-system simulation models are utilized to demonstrate the viability and safety of this approach. This is followed by hardware/software implementation and a study on 12 human subjects. Measured radial arterial waveforms exhibit signal strengths that are well above the noise floor of the system and a morphology that would be expected in an arterial pulse. Finally, comparison of the radar-based signals with a reference tonometer indicates a strong correlation between waveforms, as well as similar spectral signatures. The results observed suggest a millimeter-wave based approach for arterial pulse detection is very promising for future applications in pulse wave analysis and pulse transit time measurement for blood pressure tracking.

[1]  Sandeep Rao,et al.  The fundamentals of millimeter wave sensors , 2017 .

[2]  Roozbeh Jafari,et al.  BioWatch — A wrist watch based signal acquisition system for physiological signals including blood pressure , 2014, 2014 36th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

[3]  E. Horton,et al.  Pulse Wave Analysis by Applanation Tonometry for the Measurement of Arterial Stiffness , 2016, The open cardiovascular medicine journal.

[4]  Jason J. Saleem,et al.  Wearable Heart Rate Monitor Technology Accuracy in Research: A Comparative Study Between PPG and ECG Technology , 2017 .

[5]  Vital signs: awareness and treatment of uncontrolled hypertension among adults--United States, 2003-2010. , 2012, MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report.

[6]  Omer T. Inan,et al.  SeismoWatch , 2017, Proc. ACM Interact. Mob. Wearable Ubiquitous Technol..

[7]  Jean-Michel Redoute,et al.  Blood Pressure Estimation Using Pulse Transit Time From Bioimpedance and Continuous Wave Radar , 2017, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[8]  Roozbeh Jafari,et al.  A Robust Bioimpedance Structure for Smartwatch-Based Blood Pressure Monitoring. , 2018, Sensors.

[9]  Maciej Wojnowski,et al.  A Highly Integrated 60 GHz 6-Channel Transceiver With Antenna in Package for Smart Sensing and Short-Range Communications , 2016, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[10]  Jessi Johnson,et al.  Arterial Pulse Measurement with Wearable Millimeter Wave Device , 2019, 2019 IEEE 16th International Conference on Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks (BSN).

[11]  J. Seybold.  Introduction to RF Propagation , 2005 .

[12]  T. Horng,et al.  Noncontact Pulse Transit Time Measurement Using a Single-Frequency Continuous-Wave Radar , 2018, 2018 IEEE/MTT-S International Microwave Symposium - IMS.

[13]  Xiaohua Zhu,et al.  Non-contact Beat-to-beat Blood Pressure Measurement Using Continuous Wave Doppler Radar , 2018, 2018 IEEE/MTT-S International Microwave Symposium - IMS.

[14]  Tzuen-Hsi Huang,et al.  60-GHz Millimeter-Wave Life Detection System (MLDS) for Noncontact Human Vital-Signal Monitoring , 2012, IEEE Sensors Journal.

[15]  S. Mikki,et al.  A Theory of Antenna Electromagnetic Near Field—Part I , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation.

[16]  Insoo Kim,et al.  Towards development of a mobile RF Doppler sensor for continuous heart rate variability and blood pressure monitoring , 2016, 2016 38th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC).

[17]  Adrian D. C. Chan,et al.  Effect of Pressure on Skin-Electrode Impedance in Wearable Biomedical Measurement Devices , 2018, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement.

[18]  Mark Butlin,et al.  Arterial blood pressure measurement and pulse wave analysis—their role in enhancing cardiovascular assessment , 2010, Physiological measurement.

[19]  Tzung K. Hsiai,et al.  Cuff-Less and Continuous Blood Pressure Monitoring: A Methodological Review , 2017 .

[20]  Changzhan Gu,et al.  Application of Linear-Frequency-Modulated Continuous-Wave (LFMCW) Radars for Tracking of Vital Signs , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[21]  Desney S. Tan,et al.  In vivo evaluation of a novel, wrist-mounted arterial pressure sensing device versus the traditional hand-held tonometer. , 2016, Medical engineering & physics.

[22]  M. O'Rourke,et al.  Pulse wave analysis. , 2001, British journal of clinical pharmacology.

[23]  Y. Chow,et al.  Broadband microstrip patch antenna , 1998 .

[24]  R. W. Lau,et al.  The dielectric properties of biological tissues: III. Parametric models for the dielectric spectrum of tissues. , 1996, Physics in medicine and biology.

[25]  R Rohling,et al.  Radial artery tonometry: moderately accurate but unpredictable technique of continuous non-invasive arterial pressure measurement. , 1996, British journal of anaesthesia.

[26]  Y. M. M. Antar,et al.  A Theory of Antenna Electromagnetic Near Field—Part II , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation.

[27]  Tapas Mondal,et al.  Wearable Sensors for Remote Health Monitoring , 2017, Sensors.

[28]  Paul C.-P. Chao,et al.  A PPG sensor for continuous cuffless blood pressure monitoring with self-adaptive signal processing , 2017, 2017 International Conference on Applied System Innovation (ICASI).

[29]  Survi Kyal,et al.  Toward Ubiquitous Blood Pressure Monitoring via Pulse Transit Time: Theory and Practice , 2015, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[30]  Roozbeh Jafari,et al.  An Accurate Bioimpedance Measurement System for Blood Pressure Monitoring , 2018, Sensors.

[31]  Hong-Dun Lin,et al.  Using dual-antenna nanosecond pulse near-field sensing technology for non-contact and continuous blood pressure measurement , 2012, 2012 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

[32]  R. Payne,et al.  Pulse transit time measured from the ECG: an unreliable marker of beat-to-beat blood pressure. , 2006, Journal of applied physiology.