Noncontact Monitoring of Relative Changes in Blood Pressure Using Microwave Radar Sensors

Abstract

This study aims to confirm whether noncontact monitoring of relative changes in blood pressure can be estimated using microwave radar sensors. First, an equation to estimate blood pressure was derived, after which, the effectiveness of the estimation equation was confirmed using data obtained by a noncontact method while inducing variations in blood pressure. We considered that the Bramwell-Hill equation, which contains some parameters that directly indicate changes in blood pressure, would be an appropriate reference to con-struct an estimation equation for the noncontact method, because measurements using microwave radar sensors can measure minute scale motion on the skin surface induced by the pulsation of blood vessels. In order to estimate relative changes in blood pressure, we considered a simple equation including the pulse transit time (PTT), amplitude of signals and body dimensions as parameters. To verify the effectiveness of the equation for estimating changes in blood pressure, two experiments were conducted: a cycling task using an ergometer, which induces blood pressure fluctuations because of After the converter, bandpass filters passband - 2.5 were applied to both radar outputs to reduce the noise and interference. These bandpass filters cover ranges of 30 - 150 heartbeats per minute. After bandpass filtering, to estimate the change in blood pressure, parameters were acquired from signal data, and the change in blood pressure was estimated using the equation with the acquired parameters as inputs.