Abstract
This study investigates the potential of the limb ballistocardiogram (BCG) for unobtrusive estimation of cardiovascular (CV) parameters. In conjunction with the reference CV parameters (including diastolic, pulse, and systolic pressures, stroke volume, cardiac output, and total peripheral resistance), an upper-limb BCG based on an accelerometer embedded in a wearable armband and a lower-limb BCG based on a strain gauge embedded in a weighing scale were instrumented simultaneously with a finger photoplethysmogram (PPG). To standardize the analysis, the more convenient yet unconventional armband BCG was transformed into the more conventional weighing scale BCG (called the synthetic weighing scale BCG) using a signal processing procedure. The characteristic features were extracted from these BCG and PPG waveforms in the form of wave-to-wave time intervals, wave amplitudes, and wave-to-wave amplitudes. Then, the relationship between the characteristic features associated with (i) the weighing scale BCG-PPG pair and (ii) the synthetic weighing scale BCG-PPG pair versus the CV parameters, was analyzed using the multivariate linear regression analysis. The results indicated that each of the CV parameters of interest may be accurately estimated by a combination of as few as two characteristic features in the upper-limb or lower-limb BCG, and also that the characteristic features recruited for the CV parameters were to a large extent relevant according to the physiological mechanism underlying the BCG.
Highlights
The ballistocardiogram (BCG) is the recording of body movement in response to the ejection of the blood by the heart
DP, pulse pressure (PP), systolic BP (SP), and total peripheral resistance (TPR) increased in response to cold pressor intervention (CP), mental arithmetic intervention (MA), and breath holding intervention (BH), while it decreased in response to slow breathing intervention (SB)
Noting that cardiac output (CO) increased in CP and MA, the decrease in stroke volume (SV)
Summary
The ballistocardiogram (BCG) is the recording of body movement (including displacement, velocity, and acceleration) in response to the ejection of the blood by the heart. As the blood circulates in the body, the rest of the body moves in the opposite direction to the circulating blood so that the center of mass of the entire body is maintained. This body movement may be recorded using a wide range of BCG instruments, such as a force plate [1,2,3], weighing scale [4,5,6,7], bed [8,9], chair [10,11,12], and wearables [13,14,15]. A recent study by us elucidated that the BCG is primarily attributed to the interaction of blood pressure
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