Deterministic propagation of blood pressure waveform from human wrists to fingertips

Abstract

Feeling the pulse on the wrist is one of the most important diagnostic methods in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). In this paper we test whether there is any difference between feeling the pulse on the wrist or at any other part of the body, such as at the fingertips? To do this we employ the optimal neural networks estimated by description length to model blood pressure propagation from the wrist to the fingertip, and then apply the method of surrogate data to the residuals of this model. Our result indicates that for healthy subjects measuring pulse waveform at the fingertip is equivalent to feeling pulse on the lateral artery (wrist). © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.