rU-Net, Multi-Scale Feature Fusion and Transfer Learning: Unlocking the Potential of Cuffless Blood Pressure Monitoring With PPG and ECG.

Journal: IEEE journal of biomedical and health informatics
PMID:

Abstract

This study introduces an innovative deep-learning model for cuffless blood pressure estimation using PPG and ECG signals, demonstrating state-of-the-art performance on the largest clean dataset, PulseDB. The rU-Net architecture, a fusion of U-Net and ResNet, enhances both generalization and feature extraction accuracy. Accurate multi-scale feature capture is facilitated by short-time Fourier transform (STFT) time-frequency distributions and multi-head attention mechanisms, allowing data-driven feature selection. The inclusion of demographic parameters as supervisory information further elevates performance. On the calibration-based dataset, our model excels, achieving outstanding accuracy (SBP MAE ± std: 4.49 ± 4.86 mmHg, DBP MAE ± std: 2.69 ± 3.10 mmHg), surpassing AAMI standards and earning a BHS Grade A rating. Addressing the challenge of calibration-free data, we propose a fine-tuning-based transfer learning approach. Remarkably, with only 10% data transfer, our model attains exceptional accuracy (SBP MAE ± std: 4.14 ± 5.01 mmHg, DBP MAE ± std: 2.48 ± 2.93 mmHg). This study sets the stage for the development of highly accurate and reliable wearable cuffless blood pressure monitoring devices.

Authors

  • Jiaming Chen
    Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
  • Xueling Zhou
  • Lei Feng
    National Clinical Research Center for Mental Disorders & Beijing Key Laboratory of Mental Disorders, Beijing Anding Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.
  • Bingo Wing-Kuen Ling
    School of Information Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangdong, Guangzhou, China.
  • Lianyi Han
  • Hongtao Zhang
    School of Computer Science and Engineering, Xi'an University of Technology, Xi'an 710048, China.