Wearable Pneumatic Sensor for Non-invasive Continuous Arterial Blood Pressure Monitoring

Abstract

The paper discusses a new type of active sensors for continuous non-invasive monitoring of arterial blood pressure based on the local pressure compensation. Practical implementation of this sensor became possible due to the effective use of modern radio-electronic element base, focused on low power consumption, miniaturization of sizes and built-in computing and communication components (microcontrollers). These characteristics are inherent in modern wearable medical devices, so the sensor proposed can be reliably attributed to this category of appliances. The use of miniature measuring unit, its arrangement close to the working area and the possibility of processing digitized data in real time directly in the microcontroller of the sensor made it possible to carry out a unique method of pressure compensation at very small (1 mm2 or less) areas of elastic surfaces, such as the surface tissues of the human body. The technical implementation of the principle of local pressure compensation in the form of a pneumatic sensor, features of blood pressure measurement regimes, the results obtained and some theoretical recommendations are considered in the paper. The problem of stability of measurement modes is discussed in detail. Experimentally discovered causes of stability disturbance are considered and their theoretical analysis is carried out. The conclusion summarizes the results and outlines the ways of further research.