Development of a TCM-based pulse impedance measurement system

Palpation is an important holistic health diagnosis skill in Tradition Chinese Medicine (TCM). This paper presents a TCM based pulse measurement system which is comprised of a strain gauge based pulse force sensing unit, a varying depth mechanism, signal processing circuits, a data acquisition system and a user interface. The acquired pulse data are recorded for real-time pulse signal display and post-processing. To avoid subjective errors, this paper adopts an average waveform calculation technique to construct a representative single pulse waveform for pulse diagnosis. With the measured pressing depth and force information, the study particularly considers the effects of pulse impedance and takes it as an auxiliary performance index to enhance evaluation of pulse waveform from a TCM perspective. The experiments of measuring a normal Ping Mai pulse waveform demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed system.