Development of a biomimetic non-invasive radial pulse sensor: Design, calibration, and applications

The research work aims at developing a real time non-invasive metabolism and blood circulation surveillance system for monitoring human´s health condition by sensing the various bio-signals on human body. Our goal is to use the developed system to study the functions and characters of organs and tissues that highly relate with the metabolism and blood circulation system, also it is expected to help modeling the entire circulation system. At Phase I of the research, in this paper we focus on developing a new low-cost, portable, high accuracy, non-invasive radial pulse sensor. Inspired by touch capability and related biomechanical advantage of human fingertip, the mechanical design of the sensor mimics the physiological structure of human fingertip. The designed biomimetic sensor is well calibrated using a high-accuracy force sensor and the model is accurately identified by the system identification method. The calibrated sensor is then applied to diagnose the arterial stiffness by measuring the augmentation index (AI) which is the important biomarker of vascular aging. Preliminary results demonstrate the sensor performance that it is capable of non-invasively, accurately and reliably measuring radial pulse signals at real time, as well can be used to quantitatively determine the vessel aging.