Autonomous Calibration of Blood Pressure Dependent Data Using Second-Order Blood Pressure Variation for a Future Mobile Diagnostic: Requirements for a Calibration

Currently, blood pressure assessment is on the verge of shifting from classical cuff-based measurements to continuous estimation using smart devices based on the absorption and reflection characteristics of light in tissue. This type of blood pressure estimation has been known for a long time and depends on calibration with conventional blood pressure measurement systems. Products from well-known manufacturers in this market already perform calibration with automatic cuffs using an oscillometric estimation. The main aim is to show that classical oscillometric blood pressure estimation is not suitable for calibration, which allows a burden-free and continuous estimation by today’s approaches. This study identifies the reason and also the solution for this in the second-order blood pressure variation. The current approach to oscillometric estimation of blood pressure has an uncorrectable systematic error of the order of the second-order blood pressure variation. Therefore the current method has too much error to be used as a basis for calibration to allow continuous estimation of blood pressure based on another vital parameter. It is shown that when using a measurement of the second-order blood pressure variation as basis for such calibration this problem can be solved.