A model-based calibration method for noninvasive and cuffless measurement of arterial blood pressure

It has been accepted by some researchers that pulse transit time (PTT) is correlated with arterial blood pressure (ABP). However, the applications of PTT-based approach for BP measurement are limited due to the lack of convenient calibration method. This paper aims to propose an innovative model-based calibration system, which makes use of pressure change during air deflation of arm cuff to obtain the calibration curve for each individual. Experimental results on ten healthy subjects show that the derived calibration curve has good linearity (R=-0.90, p<0.05), which led to the acceptable prediction errors (1.1 plusmn 6.7 mm Hg for mean BP, 3.6 plusmn 6.9 mm Hg for systolic BP and 2.1 plusmn 8.2 mm Hg for diastolic BP) for the changed pressure of the tested subjects after exercise. The preliminary result indicates that the proposed calibration method is promising to be used for noninvasive and cuffless measurement of ABP in wearable device.