Investigation on the Feasibility of Blood Pressure Estimation Through Millimeter-wave FMCW Radar

In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of estimating blood pressure through millimeter-wave FMCW radar. As high blood pressure can cause many diseases including stroke, heart attack, kidney disease, and vision loss, it is important to measure blood pressure regularly. Even though the cuff-based device has been commonly used owing to its accuracy, it is cumbersome to wear and provide only a one-time reading. Remote and continuous monitoring of blood pressure can offer a chance for convenient early detection and diagnosis of heart disease. We study the correlation between blood pressure and FMCW radar returns. The pulse wave velocity is known to be highly correlated with blood pressure. We use radar to measure the pulse wave velocity through features obtained from skin displacement. We measured the chest of a human and the measured data verifies that the sharpness of the graph has a strong correlation with blood pressure.