Noninvasive monitoring of arterial viscoelastic indices using a foil-type pressure sensor

This paper proposes a noninvasive method for estimating the dynamic characteristics of arterial walls using pulse waves measured in various parts of the body by a foil-type pressure sensor. The sensor not only has high sensitivity and flexibility but also features the ability to continuously measure the alternating-current component of pulse waves. These capabilities make it suitable for estimating the dynamic characteristics of arterial walls. In this paper, a foil-type pressure sensor was employed to measure pulse waves based on the tonometry approach, and a method of estimating changes in arterial viscoelastic indices was proposed based on the measured pulse waves and photoplethysmograms. In order to accurately measure blood pressure, first, we examined suitable mechanical forces to the sensor, and found that values of 5-25 [N] yielded the best performance. We then estimated the arterial viscoelastic indices of a radial artery and a dorsal pedis artery when mechanical pain stimuli were applied to the subjects. The results suggested that the estimated indices can be used to quantitatively assess vascular response caused by sympathicotonia. We thus concluded that the proposed method enabled noninvasive measurement of pulse waves in the dorsal pedis artery and estimation of arterial viscoelastic indices.