EQUIVALENCE BETWEEN "FEELING THE PULSE" ON THE HUMAN WRIST AND THE PULSE PRESSURE WAVE AT FINGERTIP

Abstract

Feeling the pulse on the wrist is the regular diagnostic method in traditional Chinese medicine. However it is natural to ask whether there is any difference between feeling the pulse on the wrist or at any other part of the body: such as the fingertips at which it is easily measured by electronic devices. We employ a series of neural networks to model blood pressure propagation from the wrist to the fingertip. In order to avoid the problem of over-fitting we apply information theoretic criterion to determine the optimal model in these networks and then apply surrogate data method to the residuals in this model. We demonstrate the application of this method to recordings of human pulse in six subjects. Our result indicates that there is no significant difference between pulse waveform measure on the lateral arterial artery (wrist) and at the fingertip.