Piezoelectric Sensor for the Monitoring of Arterial Pulse Wave: Detection of Arrhythmia Occurring in PAC/PVC Patients

Previous studies have found that the non-invasive blood pressure measurement method based on the oscillometric method is inaccurate when an arrhythmia occurs. Therefore, we propose a high-sensitivity pulse sensor that can measure the hemodynamic characteristics of the pulse wave and then estimate the blood pressure. When an arrhythmia occurs, the hemodynamics of the pulse wave are abnormal and change the morphology of the pulse wave. Our proposed sensor can measure the occurrence of ectopic beats from the radial artery, and the detection algorithm can reduce the error of blood pressure estimation caused by the distortion of ectopic beats that occurs when the pulse wave is measured. In this study, we tested patients with premature atrial contraction (PAC) or premature ventricular contraction (PVC) and analyzed the morphology of the pulse waves when the sensor detected the ectopic beats. We discuss the advantages of using the Moens–Korteweg equation to estimate the blood pressure of patients with arrhythmia, which is different from the oscillometric method. Our research provides a possible arrhythmia detection method for wearable devices and can accurately estimate blood pressure in a non-invasive way during an arrhythmia.