Blood pressure (BP) is critical in diagnosing certain cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension. Some previous studies have proved that BP can be estimated by pulse transit time (PTT) calculated by a pair of photoplethysmography (PPG) signals at two body sites. Currently, contact PPG (cPPG) and imaging PPG (iPPG) are two feasible ways to obtain PPG signals. In this study, we proposed a hybrid system (called the ICPPG system) employing both methods that can be implemented on a wearable device, facilitating the measurement of BP in an inconspicuous way. The feasibility of the ICPPG system was validated on a dataset with 29 subjects. It has been proved that the ICPPG system is able to estimate PTT values. Moreover, the PTT measured by the new system shows a correlation on average with BP variations for most subjects, which could facilitate a new generation of BP measurement using wearable and mobile devices.
Keywords: imaging photoplethysmography; photoplethysmography; pulse transit time; unobtrusive BP measurement.