Wireless Wrist Pulse Monitor Design

Abstract

Wrist pulse has been used for diagnosis of disease in Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medical system. But this diagnosis is subjective to the experience and sense of the medical practitioner as same pulse may be interpreted in different way by different person. In order to make this diagnosis objective rather than subjective, digitization of wrist pulse is needed. Many platforms have been developed for acquiring the wrist pulse; however, they lack simplicity and are not suitable for continuous monitoring. To feel the wrist pulse traditional doctor places finger on wrist and applies pressure with help of finger. The applied pressure is variable according to age and skin thickness of patient. But most of system developed for wrist pulse acquisition system applies a fixed pressure. In this paper we propose a system which automatically calculates the optimum pressure for measuring the wrist pulse saves the data on SD card and provides capability to connect to the android device through Bluetooth. To apply pressure mini air-pump motor and solenoid valve is used to inflate and deflate the rubber cuff. Cortex-M4 family controller is used for controlling the system. Touchscreen LCD screen is used to display the wrist pulse. Energy ratio of the wave is calculated to determine health status of the person. Android app has been developed to acquire this wrist pulse in real time. Android application can transmit this data to the doctor of subject for continuous monitoring and further processing.