Pulse Wave Monitoring for Arterial Stiffness Detection Using a Simple Portable Tonometer

Abstract

The work presented in this paper concerns the design, fabrication and test of a simple portable device able to measure in real time the cardiac frequency and the pulse wave, plus the pulse velocity in specific conditions (carotid and femoral locations). The sensing part is based on a thin film technology embedded in polymer and the data processing part is based on a classical pre-amplifying circuit associated with digitalization and shape detection algorithm. The whole device has been chosen as one demonstrator in the EveryWear project of the PROXIMA mission launched by the European Space Agency, the France’s space agency CNES with space medicine specialists MEDES, to estimate the arterial stiffness variations under microgravity conditions and weightlessness. Raw data are stored through the remote tablet application and will be later processed using Matlab.

Keywords

• pulse wave monitoring
• arterial stiffness
• portable medical sensor