Frequency domain analysis of radial pulse in abnormal health conditions

Abstract

Radial pulse has been utilized to identify health status in Indian and Chinese complementary medicine approaches. The radial pulse signal in abnormal health conditions show variations in its morphology in comparison to that of the healthy subjects, resulting in changes in the pulse power spectrum. Comparison between the power spectrum of pulse signal for the subjects suffering from gastrointestinal disorders and healthy subjects has been carried out in this work. A frequency domain feature “Band Energy Ratio (BER)” has been defined to identify the band of frequencies carrying significant difference between these two groups. Abnormal bands showing significant elevation of energies has been identified as 4Hz to 10Hz band. Based on Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) analysis, 8 Hz to 10 Hz band has been identified carrying further significance giving 89.7% sensitivity, 90.5% specificity and 90% accuracy as optimum parameters to segregate the two groups.