A Review of Equipment and Signal Processing of The Automated Auscultation for Blood Pressure Measurement

Blood pressure is a critical indicator that should be checked often to avoid hypertension symptoms, suggesting cardiac problems, strokes, and sudden death. Blood pressure should be measured as precisely as possible to provide proper diagnosis and treatment. The manual auscultation method is the gold standard for noninvasive blood pressure monitoring. However, this approach is still regarded as very subjective. Several automation approaches are being developed, including the oscillometric method, ultrasonography, PPG, and automated auscultation. Automated auscultation has been grown since around 2000, but this method is still not as developed as automatic oscillometric. Because the auscultation method is still the primary reference standard and automated methods might minimize blood pressure reading mistakes, this article will explicitly examine the automatic auscultation for blood pressure measurement, especially equipment and signal processing. Further development of automated auscultation will focus on using advanced technology, such as wireless devices and the Internet of Things (IoT).