In the last 30 days

• Open/close Arterial blood pressure measurement and pulse wave analysis—their role in enhancing cardiovascular assessment

  Alberto P Avolio et al 2010 Physiol. Meas. 31 R1 Tag this article

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  The most common method of clinical measurement of arterial blood pressure is by means of the cuff sphygmomanometer. This instrument has provided fundamental quantitative information on arterial pressure in individual subjects and in populations and facilitated estimation of cardiovascular risk related to levels of blood pressure obtained from the brachial cuff. Although the measurement is taken in a peripheral limb, the values are generally assumed to reflect the pressure throughout the arterial tree in large conduit arteries. Since the arterial pressure pulse becomes modified as it travels away from the heart towards the periphery, this is generally true for mean and diastolic pressure, but not for systolic pressure, and so pulse pressure. The relationship between central and peripheral pulse pressure depends on propagation characteristics of arteries. Hence, while the sphygmomanometer gives values of two single points on the pressure wave (systolic and diastolic pressure), there is additional information that can be obtained from the time-varying pulse waveform that enables an improved quantification of the systolic load on the heart and other central organs. This topical review will assess techniques of pressure measurement that relate to the use of the cuff sphygmomanometer and to the non-invasive registration and analysis of the peripheral and central arterial pressure waveform. Improved assessment of cardiovascular function in relation to treatment and management of high blood pressure will result from future developments in the indirect measurement of arterial blood pressure that involve the conventional cuff sphygmomanometer with the addition of information derived from the peripheral arterial pulse.

• Open/close Photoplethysmography and its application in clinical physiological measurement

  John Allen 2007 Physiol. Meas. 28 R1 Tag this article

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  Photoplethysmography (PPG) is a simple and low-cost optical technique that can be used to detect blood volume changes in the microvascular bed of tissue. It is often used non-invasively to make measurements at the skin surface. The PPG waveform comprises a pulsatile ('AC') physiological waveform attributed to cardiac synchronous changes in the blood volume with each heart beat, and is superimposed on a slowly varying ('DC') baseline with various lower frequency components attributed to respiration, sympathetic nervous system activity and thermoregulation. Although the origins of the components of the PPG signal are not fully understood, it is generally accepted that they can provide valuable information about the cardiovascular system. There has been a resurgence of interest in the technique in recent years, driven by the demand for low cost, simple and portable technology for the primary care and community based clinical settings, the wide availability of low cost and small semiconductor components, and the advancement of computer-based pulse wave analysis techniques. The PPG technology has been used in a wide range of commercially available medical devices for measuring oxygen saturation, blood pressure and cardiac output, assessing autonomic function and also detecting peripheral vascular disease. The introductory sections of the topical review describe the basic principle of operation and interaction of light with tissue, early and recent history of PPG, instrumentation, measurement protocol, and pulse wave analysis. The review then focuses on the applications of PPG in clinical physiological measurements, including clinical physiological monitoring, vascular assessment and autonomic function.

• Open/close New indices for quantification of the power spectrum of heart rate variability time series without the need of any frequency band definition

  M A García-González et al 2011 Physiol. Meas. 32 995 Tag this article

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  This paper presents a new family of indices for the frequency domain analysis of heart rate variability time series that do not need any frequency band definition. After proper detrending of the time series, a cumulated power spectrum is obtained and frequencies that contain a certain percentage of the power below them are identified, so median frequency, bandwidth and a measure of the power spectrum asymmetry are proposed to complement or improve the classical spectral indices as the ratio of the powers of LF and HF bands (LF/HF). In normal conditions the median frequency provides similar information as the classical indices, while the bandwidth and asymmetry can be complementary measures of the physiological state of the tested subject. The proposed indices seem to be a good choice for tracking changes in the power spectrum in exercise stress, and they can guide in the determination of frequency band limits in other animal species.

• Open/close A fast parametric modelling algorithm with the Powell method

  L Lu et al 1995 Physiol. Meas. 16 A39 Tag this article

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  This paper presents a model that comprises only two parameters (R/S, f _r) and the application of three function minimization algorithms (simplex, Powell and modified Powell) to this model to obtain parametric images. Comparisons among the three algorithms in terms of efficiency and reliability were carried out. It was found that, with proper initialization by taking the shape of the modelled data into consideration, the minimization function can be approximated by a quadratic function near the minimum point, therefore the iteration times can be minimized in the modified Powell method. The results show that with the modified Powell method a substantial reduction of computation time can be achieved in the parametric imaging. This makes it possible to obtain a 16*16 parametric image in 1 s.

• Open/close The structure of heart rate asymmetry: deceleration and acceleration runs

  J Piskorski and P Guzik 2011 Physiol. Meas. 32 1011 Tag this article

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  A family of new heart rate asymmetry measures is introduced, namely deceleration and acceleration runs, as well as entropic measures summarizing their distribution. We introduce the theoretical run distribution for shuffled data and use it as a reference for interpreting the results. The measures defined in the paper are applied to actual 24 h Holter ECG recordings from 87 healthy people, and it is demonstrated that the patterns of accelerations are different from those of decelerations. Acceleration runs are longer and more numerous: all runs of accelerations, with the exception of lengths 3 and 4, are more numerous than those of decelerations. These findings are reflected in the difference between the entropic measures for acceleration and deceleration runs: for 74 subjects the acceleration-related entropic parameter is greater than that of decelerations ( p < 0.001). For shuffled data there is no difference in the above parameters, and there are more short runs and fewer long runs than in physiological data. The influence of the measuring equipment resolution is also discussed.

• Open/close The impact of electrode area, contact impedance and boundary shape on EIT images

  Alistair Boyle and Andy Adler 2011 Physiol. Meas. 32 745 Tag this article

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  Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) measures the conductivity distribution within an object based on the current applied and voltage measured at surface electrodes. Thus, EIT images are sensitive to electrode properties (i.e. contact impedance, electrode area and boundary shape under the electrode). While some of these electrode properties have been investigated individually, this paper investigates these properties and their interaction using finite element method simulations and the complete electrode model (CEM). The effect of conformal deformations on image reconstruction when using the CEM was of specific interest. Observed artefacts were quantified using a measure that compared an ideal image to the reconstructed image, in this case a no-noise reconstruction that isolated the electrodes' effects. For electrode contact impedance and electrode area, uniform reductions to all electrodes resulted in ringing artefacts in the reconstructed images when the CEM was used, while parameter variations that were not correlated amongst electrodes resulted in artefacts distributed throughout the image. When the boundary shape changed under the electrode, as with non-symmetric conformal deformations, using the CEM resulted in structured distortions within the reconstructed image. Mean electrode contact impedance increases, independent of inter-electrode variation, did not result in artefacts in the reconstructed image.

• Open/close Impedance sensor technology for cell-based assays in the framework of a high-content screening system

  T Schwarzenberger et al 2011 Physiol. Meas. 32 977 Tag this article

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  Living cultured cells react to external influences, such as pharmaceutical agents, in an intricate manner due to their complex internal signal processing. Impedance sensing of cells on microelectrodes is a favored label-free technology to indicate cellular events, usually ascribed to morphologic alteration or changes in cellular adhesion, which is usually found in stand-alone systems that do not incorporate life support or additional sensor systems. However, only in symbiosis with metabolic activity sensing and picture documentation may a complete insight into cellular vitality be provided. This complement was created within the framework of an automated high-content screening system previously developed by our group, monitoring 24 cell culture chambers in parallel. The objective of this paper is the development of miniaturized electronics for impedance measurements and its system integration as a modular unit. In addition, it is shown how sensor electrodes were optimized by impedance matching such that spectroscopy and raw data analysis become feasible for every culture well. Undesired mechanical stress on cultured cells may arise from the medium and agent support system of the autonomous screening apparatus. This paper demonstrates how this hazard is treated with the simulation of microfluidics and impedance measurements. Physiological data are subsequently derived from the exemplary tumor cell line MCF-7 both during treatment with the agent doxorubicin and through the impact of natural killer cells. This correlates the information content of complex impedance spectra with cellular respiration as well as data from microscopy.

• Open/close Evaluation of EIT system performance

  Mamatjan Yasin et al 2011 Physiol. Meas. 32 851 Tag this article

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  An electrical impedance tomography (EIT) system images internal conductivity from surface electrical stimulation and measurement. Such systems necessarily comprise multiple design choices from cables and hardware design to calibration and image reconstruction. In order to compare EIT systems and study the consequences of changes in system performance, this paper describes a systematic approach to evaluate the performance of the EIT systems. The system to be tested is connected to a saline phantom in which calibrated contrasting test objects are systematically positioned using a position controller. A set of evaluation parameters are proposed which characterize (i) data and image noise, (ii) data accuracy, (iii) detectability of single contrasts and distinguishability of multiple contrasts, and (iv) accuracy of reconstructed image (amplitude, resolution, position and ringing). Using this approach, we evaluate three different EIT systems and illustrate the use of these tools to evaluate and compare performance. In order to facilitate the use of this approach, all details of the phantom, test objects and position controller design are made publicly available including the source code of the evaluation and reporting software.

• Open/close Evaluation of algorithms for calculating bioimpedance phase angle values from measured whole-body impedance modulus

  Bernt J Nordbotten et al 2011 Physiol. Meas. 32 755 Tag this article

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  This paper addresses the problem of calculating the bioimpedance phase angle from measurements of impedance modulus. A complete impedance measurement was performed on altogether 20 healthy persons using a Solatron 1260/1294 system. The obtained impedance modulus (absolute impedance value) values were used to calculate the Cole parameters and from them the phase angles. In addition, the phase angles were also calculated using a Kramers–Kronig approach. A correlation analysis for all subjects at each frequency (5, 50, 100 and 200 kHz) for both methods gave R ² values ranging from 0.7 to 0.96 for the Cole approach and from 0.83 to 0.96 for the Kramers–Kronig approach; thus, both methods gave good results compared with the complete measurement results. From further statistical significance testing of the absolute value of the difference between measured and calculated phase angles, it was found that the Cole equation method gave significantly better agreement for the 50 and 100 kHz frequencies. In addition, the Cole equation method gives the four Cole parameters ( R ₀, R _∞, τ _z and α) using measurements at frequencies up to 200 kHz while the Kramers–Kronig method used frequencies up to 500 kHz to reduce the effect of truncation on the calculated results. Both methods gave results that can be used for further bioimpedance calculations, thus improving the application potential of bioimpedance measurement results obtained using relatively inexpensive and portable measurement equipment.

• Open/close Activity identification using body-mounted sensors—a review of classification techniques

  Stephen J Preece et al 2009 Physiol. Meas. 30 R1 Tag this article

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  With the advent of miniaturized sensing technology, which can be body-worn, it is now possible to collect and store data on different aspects of human movement under the conditions of free living. This technology has the potential to be used in automated activity profiling systems which produce a continuous record of activity patterns over extended periods of time. Such activity profiling systems are dependent on classification algorithms which can effectively interpret body-worn sensor data and identify different activities. This article reviews the different techniques which have been used to classify normal activities and/or identify falls from body-worn sensor data. The review is structured according to the different analytical techniques and illustrates the variety of approaches which have previously been applied in this field. Although significant progress has been made in this important area, there is still significant scope for further work, particularly in the application of advanced classification techniques to problems involving many different activities.