The Adaptive Frequency Band for Blood Pressure Variability Measurement during Nonstationary Conditions

Abstract

Background: The variation of blood pressure indicates the status of cardiovascular circulation. The spectral analysis of blood pressure variability (BPV) provides a way to quantitatively assess the variations by specific fixed frequency band. Blood pressure contains various non-stationary fluctuations and varies individually. It is hard to assess the non-stationary characteristics based on stationary method. Method: Recently, a novel adaptive extraction method, called empirical mode decomposition (EMD), was proposed and is capable to extract the non-stationary intrinsic trends from blood pressure waveform. Results: The results showed that the non-stationary intrinsic trends extracted by EMD are high correlated to the power in conventional fixed frequency band (r>0.7). Conclusions: This study examined the potential usage of EMD on BPV measurement and provided the reliable estimation of BPV based on adaptive frequency band. Moreover, the main frequency of the non-stationary trend can be evaluated by this method. It helps for cardiovascular studies and the optimal frequency band exploration.