Non-Invasive Arterial Pressure Waveform Monitoring

An arterial blood pressure (ABP) waveform provides valuable information in treating cardiovascular diseases of patients. Although an arterial line is considered a gold standard, the disadvantage of this method is its invasive nature. Ultrasonic ABP monitoring is preferable because of the potentially portable system implementation and its non-invasive nature, thus minimizing tissue damage and the possibility of infection. The proposed ultrasonic ABP monitoring is achieved by observing the pulsatile change of a cross-sectional area and identifying the elastic property of an arterial vessel, represented by a pulse wave velocity (PWV; the propagation speed of a pressure wave along an arterial tree). An experimental setup was established to verify the validity of this pressure estimation technique, showing good agreement between ultrasonically estimated and measured pressure waveforms.