A Photoplethysmographic Signal Isolated from an Additive Motion Artifact by Frequency Translation

Abstract

Acquiring a precise percentage of oxygen saturation (SpO2) from a finger-probe pulse oximeter is dependent on both artifact-free red and infrared photoplethysmoghaphic (PPG) signals. Nonetheless, in real-life situations, these PPG signals are corrupted by a motion artifact (MA) signal that is generated from either finger or hand movement. To resolve this MA interference, the cause of the adulteration of PPG signals by the MA signal is examined. The MA signal is found to behave like an additive noise. Additionally, the frequency responses of the MA and PPG signals show that these signals are in the same frequency band. Hence, instead of direct current, a sinusoidal wave alternating current is proposed to drive an LED source in order to shift the PPG frequency band away from the MA frequency band. Experimentally, a commercial finger-probe pulse oximeter is employed. To determine the performance of the presented scheme, the resulting PPG signals are compared with those from employing the old-fashioned LED-driving method. In addition, the accuracy is verified by computing the SpO2 value. The results reveal that the proposed approach successfully retains the fundamental morphologies of the PPG structures when motion occurs. Moreover, the calculated SpO2 values from the proposed technique provide an average error of approximately 1.4%, whereas the conventional method yields a mean error approximately 4.2%.