An integrated blood pressure measurement system for suppression of motion artifacts

Accuracy in blood pressure (BP) estimation is essential for proper diagnosis and management of hypertension. Motion artifacts are considered external sources of inaccuracy and can be due to sudden arm motion, muscle tremor, shivering, and transport vehicle vibrations. In the proposed work, a new algorithmic stage is integrated in a non-invasive BP monitor. This stage suppresses the effect of the motion artifact and adjusts the pressure estimation before displaying it to users. The proposed stage is based on a 3-axis accelerometer signal, which helps in the accurate detection of the motion artifact. Both transient motion artifacts and artifact due to vibrations are suppressed using algorithms based on Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD). Measurements with human subjects show that the proposed algorithms considerably improved the accuracy of the blood pressure estimates in comparison with the commonly-used conventional oscillometric algorithm that does not include an EMD-based stage for artifact suppression, and allowed the estimates to meet the requirements of the international ANSI/AAMI/ISO standard.