A unified calibration paradigm for a better cuffless blood pressure estimation with modes of elastic tube and vascular elasticity

Although two modes of elastic tube (ET) and vascular elasticity (VE) have been well explored for cuffless continuous blood pressure (BP) monitoring estimation, the initial calibration with these two models could be derived from different mathematical mechanisms for BP estimation. The study is aimed at evaluating the performance of VE and ET models by means of an advanced point-to-point (aPTP) pairing calibration. The cuff BPs were only taken up while the signals of PPG and ECG were synchronously acquired from individual subjects. Two popular VE models together with one representative ET model were designated to study aPTP as a unified assessment criterion. The VE model has demonstrated the stronger correlation r of 0.89 and 0.86 of SBP and DBP, respectively, and the lower estimated BP error of -0.01±5.90 (4.55) mmHg and 0.04±4.40 (3.38) mmHg of SBP and DBP, respectively, than the ET model. With the ET model, there is a significant difference between the methods of conventional least-square (LS) calibration and aPTP calibration (p<0.05). These results showed that the VE model surpasses the ET model under the same uniform calibration. The outcome has been unveiled that the selection of initial calibration methods was vital to work out diastolic BP with the ET model. The study revealed an evident fact about initial sensitivity between the modes of different BP estimation and initial calibration.