Continuous monitoring of pulse waves plays a significant role in reflecting physical conditions and disease diagnosis. However, the current collection equipment cannot simultaneously achieve wearable and continuous monitoring under varying pressure and provide personalized pulse wave monitoring targeted different human bodies. To solve the above problems, this paper proposed a novel wearable and real-time pulse wave monitoring system based on a novel flexible compound sensor. Firstly, a custom-packaged pressure sensor, a signal stabilization structure, and a micro pressurization system make up the flexible compound sensor to complete the stable acquisition of pulse wave signals under continuously varying pressure. Secondly, a real-time algorithm completes the analysis of the trend of the pulse wave peak, which can quickly and accurately locate the best pulse wave for different individuals. Finally, the experimental results show that the wearable system can both realize continuous monitoring and reflecting trend differences and quickly locate the best pulse wave for different individuals with the 95% accuracy. The weight of the whole system is only 52.775 g, the working current is 46 mA, and the power consumption is 160 mW. Its small size and low power consumption meet wearable and portable scenarios, which has significant research value and commercialization prospects.
The accurate localization of S1 and S2 is essential for heart sound segmentation and classification. However, current direct heart sound segmentation algorithms have poor noise immunity and low accuracy. Therefore, this paper proposes a new optimal heart sound segmentation algorithm based on K-means clustering and Haar wavelet transform. The algorithm includes three parts. Firstly, this method uses the Viola integral method and Shannon’s energy-based algorithm to extract the function of the envelope of the heart sound energy. Secondly, the time–frequency domain features of the acquired envelope are extracted from different dimensions and the optimal peak is searched adaptively based on a dynamic segmentation threshold. Finally, K-means clustering and Haar wavelet transform are implemented to localize S1 and S2 of heart sounds in the time domain. After validation, the recognition rate of S1 reached 98.02% and that of S2 reached 96.76%. The model outperforms other effective methods that have been implemented. The algorithm has high robustness and noise immunity. Therefore, it can provide a new method for feature extraction and analysis of heart sound signals collected in clinical settings.
The respiratory signal is a critical index of cardiopulmonary function. In this paper, we implement the polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) sensor to collect the data of pulse waves and reference respiration signals. The correlations between the major feature values and breaths are investigated and presented. As a result, several feature values exhibit relatively good correlations with reference respiratory amplitude. The improvements of Kalman Filter for the respiratory signals extracted from feature value variances are also introduced. Moreover, we display the comparisons with low-pass filtering, Wavelet filtering, and ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) method. Using the method of identifying error breaths, the error rate of the new method is about 4:146%. The new method is feasible for real-time applications at quiet state.
The radial artery reflects the largest amount of physiological and pathological information about the human body. However, ultrasound signal processing involves a large number of complex functions, and traditional digital signal processing can hardly meet the requirements of real-time processing of ultrasound data. The research aims to improve computational accuracy and reduce the hardware complexity of ultrasound signal processing systems. Firstly, this paper proposes to apply the coordinate rotation digital computer (CORDIC) algorithm to the whole radial artery ultrasound signal processing, combines the signal processing characteristics of each sub-module, and designs the dynamic filtering module based on the radix-4 CORDIC algorithm, the quadrature demodulation module based on the partitioned-hybrid CORDIC algorithm, and the dynamic range transformation module based on the improved scale-free CORDIC algorithm. A digital radial artery ultrasound imaging system was then built to verify the accuracy of the three sub-modules. The simulation results show that the use of the high-performance CORDIC algorithm can improve the accuracy of data processing. This provides a new idea for the real-time processing of ultrasound signals. Finally, radial artery ultrasound data were collected from 20 volunteers using different probe scanning modes at three reference positions. The vessel diameter measurements were averaged to verify the reliability of the CORDIC algorithm for radial artery ultrasound imaging, which has practical application value for computer-aided clinical diagnosis.
1 January 2020 in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine
A radial artery above the radial styloid process is called GUAN and is a critical position for collecting pulse wave in traditional Chinese medicine theory. Locating GUAN is a precondition for collecting radial pulse wave. However, existing methods for locating GUAN lead to large deviations. This paper proposes a novel nontouch method for locating GUAN based on thermal imaging and image processing. This method consists of three parts: the infrared thermal imaging location imaging platform, the wrist edge contour extraction algorithm based on arbitrary angle edge recognition, and radial protrusion recognition algorithm (x coordinate identification algorithm of GUAN) and radial artery fitting algorithm (y coordinate identification algorithm of GUAN). The infrared thermal imaging positioning imaging platform is used to ensure that the wrist of the subject enters the fixed imaging area in a fixed position during each measurement and transmits the thermal imaging images carrying the image information of radial processes and radial arteries to the upper computer. Arbitrary angle edge recognition algorithm is used to extract wrist contour and radial artery edge information. The x‐axis coordinates of the radial artery were provided by the identification algorithm, and the y‐axis coordinates of the radial artery were provided by the fitting algorithm. Finally, the x and y coordinates determine the GUAN position. The algorithm for locating GUAN could provide repeatable and reliable x and y coordinates. The proposed method shows that relative standard deviation (RSD) of x distance of GUAN is less than 9.0% and RSD of y distance of GUAN is less than 5.0%. The proposed method could provide valid GUAN coordinates and reduce deviations of locating GUAN.
This study integrated ancient Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) pulse diagnosis techniques with modern machine learning to advance contemporary medical diagnostics. A portable intelligent TCM pulse diagnostic device was developed using MEMS and CMOS technologies to collect detailed pulse waveform data from three groups: healthy females, females with coronary heart disease (CHD), and pregnant females in the first trimester. Three feature selection methods—Random Forest, Recursive Feature Elimination, and correlation analysis were adopted to identify key pulse features. Thirteen classification algorithms using various combinations of feature selection and machine learning approaches were evaluated. This study achieved a maximum classification accuracy of 80% using solely pulse data. Incorporating clinical parameters such as temperature and age significantly increased classification accuracy to 91%. The Gradient Boosting Decision Tree model with correlation analysis-based feature selection and Random Forest-based dimensionality reduction demonstrated the highest accuracy. Key pulse features identified included those related to the Liver Meridian, Pericardium Meridian, and Heart Meridian, which are crucial for differentiating the three groups. This study validated the clinical utility of pulse diagnostic devices when combined with machine learning algorithms. This study demonstrates concrete clinical utility for the pulse diagnostic device, while empirically validating foundational TCM concepts. It establishes a rigorous framework to advance evidence-driven modernization of pulse diagnosis protocols.