Two-Step Pseudomaximum Amplitude-Based Confidence Interval Estimation for Oscillometric Blood Pressure Measurements

Abstract

Blood pressure (BP) is an important vital sign to determine the health of an individual. Although the estimation of average arterial blood pressure using oscillometric methods is possible, there are no established methods for obtaining confidence intervals (CIs) for systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP). In this paper, we propose a two-step pseudomaximum amplitude (TSPMA) as a novel approach to obtain improved CIs of SBP and DBP using a double bootstrap approach. The weighted median (WM) filter is employed to reduce impulsive and Gaussian noises in the step of preprocessing. Application of the proposed method provides tighter CIs and smaller standard deviation of CIs than the pseudomaximum amplitude-envelope and maximum amplitude algorithms with Student's t-method.