COHERENT PATTERN IDENTIFICATION IN NON-STATIONARY PERIODIC DATA AND BLOOD PRESSURE MEASUREMENT USING SAME

摘要

A method and apparatus for automatically recognizing meaningful patterns in non-stationary periodic data, is provided. The invention may be used in making measurements of physiological phenomena, such as arterial blood pressure, wherein data of interest is undergoing small changes in timing and magnitude in succeeding cycles, and wherein noise artifacts are detected along with the data of interest. Data points of interest are identified by grouping all received data points into family groups of multidimensional data points wherein each data point in the family group has dimensional values similar to at least one other data point in the family. The present invention may preferably be employed for the determination of a patient's systolic and diastolic blood pressure levels. For this application, the data points includes a time dimension value corresponding to the delay time between an ECG signal and the detection of a potential blood pressure sound by a microphone (30) placed in an inflatable cuff (14) on the arm of a patient, and a magnitude dimension value corresponding to the cuff pressure at the time of the potential blood pressure sound detection.