Performance of an accelerometer-based pulse presence detection approach compared to a reference sensor

Accelerometer sensors are ubiquitously available in consumer electronics such as smart phones and wearables. So far, mainly biomedical applications using accelerometers focus on providing contextual information like step counting, activity monitoring or motion artifact detection and suppression. Still, these sensors offer interesting opportunities for vital sign monitoring, even potentially for the demanding case around cardiac arrest. In this paper we show a basic feasibility study to compare the performance of an accelerometer (ACC) based pulse detection approach versus a commercially available device. For healthy subjects we found an excellent sensitivity of ACC-based pulse detection. The ACC performance was not influenced by changes in position, and ACC sensor placement was easy. The decision time for the commercial pulse detection device ranged from 10.0 – 25 s, while for our ACC-based approach it was 3.5 – 5.0 s using a trained classifier. From this preliminary study we conclude that ACC sensors might offer interesting opportunities for applications in emergency care for vital sign detection.