Feature Extraction for Pulse Waveform in Traditional Chinese Medicine by Hemodynamic Analysis

Abstract

Pulse diagnosis is one of important diagnosis methods in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Feature extraction of TCM pulse has received more and more attention in recent years. While most of previous methods for feature extraction of TCM pulse have no specific correlation with the mechanism of TCM pulse, a hemodynamics method was used to calculate the pulse waveform velocity (PWV) and pulse reflection factor (R), which reflected the principle of TCM pulse diagnosis. The results showed that the PWV and R are significantly different among four TCM pulses including normal pulse, slippery pulse, wiry pulse and wiry-slippery pulse. It is concluded that the PWV and R may be used as the features for the classification of TCM pulses.