Haptic representation of aortic pressure waveforms using synthetic ECG derived time intervals

While simple pulse-rate is perhaps the most common cardiovascular assessment, recent research suggests that there is valuable information contained in the actual pulse waveform. As the first step toward developing a feature-based haptic suite, this work investigates the ability of a consumer-grade haptic device to represent arterial touch as a function of the physiological waveform gated to synthetic ECGs instead of the more common square or triangle waveforms, which capture only heart rate. Included are preliminary observations indicating that there is a palpable difference between the representations, as well as an empirical description of the haptic sensation under both normal heart rhythm and synthesized arrhythmia.