Estimation of beat-to-beat systolic blood pressure using pulse arrive time and pulse width derived from the photoplethysmogram.

Continuous arterial blood pressure monitoring is essential in monitoring patients during surgical operation or in intensive care units. In this study, we propose a new method to estimate beat-to-beat systolic blood pressure by combining the pulse arrive time and normalized pulse width measurement. The method was examined in nine patients who were in ICU. Results shows the new method has higher linearity (0.8218) and better precision (3.0775) than the methods using either pulse arrive time or pulse width only.