Independent component analysis of finger photoplethysmography for evaluating effects of visually-induced motion sickness

Abstract

To evaluate the effects of visually-induced motion sickness that induces symptoms related to the autonomic nervous activity, we proposed a new method for obtaining the physiological index ρmax, which represents the maximum cross-correlation coefficient between blood pressure and heart rate, with measurement of neither continuous blood pressure nor ECG but using finger photoplethysmography only. In this study, a blood pressure-related parameter was obtained using the independent component analysis of finger photoplethysmography. Two experimental trials in which subjects performed the Valsalva maneuver and then they watched a swaying video image were carried out to evaluate the adequacy of the proposed method. The experimental results have shown that the proposed method worked successfully as well as the conventional method. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.