Continuous cuffless arterial blood pressure measurement based on PPG quality assessment

The continuous cuffless arterial blood pressure (ABP) can be calculated by the pulse transit velocity. Its accuracy is significantly influenced by the selection of the photoplethysmography (PPG) feature points. In this paper, we designed an assessment function to calculate the quality of PPG. The quality index indicates the reliability of PPG and helps to determine proper feature points. Kalman filter is used to fuse different PPG feature points for blood pressure calculation. This method is evaluated by the multiparameter intelligent monitoring in intensive care (MIMIC) database. The evaluation shows that it can get more accurate blood pressure results than those methods using fixed PPG feature points, especially when serious motion artefacts exist.