Novel long-term implantable blood pressure monitoring system with reduced baseline drift

A novel long-term less-invasive blood pressure monitoring system with fluid-filled cuff is proposed for advanced biological research. The system employs an instrumented elastic cuff attached with a rigid isolation ring on the outside wall of the cuff. The cuff is wrapped around a blood vessel for real-time blood pressure monitoring. The elastic cuff is made of bio-compatible soft silicone material and is filled with bio-compatible insulating silicone oil with an immersed MEMS pressure sensor. This technique avoids vessel penetration and substantially minimizes vessel restriction due to the soft cuff elasticity, thus attractive for long-term monitoring. A rigid isolation ring is used to isolate the cuff from environmental variations to suppress baseline drift in the measured waveform inside the monitoring cuff. The prototype monitoring cuff is wrapped around the right carotid artery of a laboratory rat to measure real-time blood pressure waveform. The measured in vivo blood waveform is compared with a reference waveform recorded simultaneously by using a commercial catheter-tip transducer inserted into the left carotid artery, showing matched waveforms with a scaling factor about 0.03 and a baseline drift of 0.6 mm Hg. The measured baseline drift is three times smaller compared to using a cuff without a rigid isolation ring.