Arterial pulse wave decomposition by independent component analysis

The analysis of the arterial pulse wave has become an important tool in the assessment of the cardiovascular activity and arterial properties. Most approaches using only the pressure or velocity pulse wave evaluate pulse parameters using the first or higher derivatives of the pulse wave. These methods are simple but limited in case the waves are noisy, weak, or their diastolic peak is damped. As an alternative, the wave intensity analysis provides a simple way to separate the forward and backward waves to asses pulse parameters but requires the simultaneous measurement of pressure and blood flow waves, which is not trivial. Thus we propose a more strategic approach facilitating the independence of the forward and reflected waves in order to increase the reliability of the extracted pulse parameters. The approach uses non-linear embedding of the photoplethys-mographical pulse wave within the scope of the independent component analysis to extract the hidden independent sources in the waveform. The results yield forward and reflected waves from single channel recording demonstrating the adequacy of the approach.