An Analytical Model of Motion Artifacts in a Measured Arterial Pulse Signal—Part I: Accelerometers and PPG Sensors

This paper, the first of two parts, presents an analytical model of motion artifacts (MAs) in measured pulse signals by accelerometers and photoplethysmography (PPG) sensors. As the transmission path from the true pulse signal in an artery to the sensor output (measured pulse signal), the tissue–contact–sensor (TCS) stack is modeled as a 1DOF (degree-of-freedom) system. MAs cause baseline drift of the mass and simultaneously time-varying system parameters (TVSPs) of the TCS stack. With arterial wall displacement and pulsatile pressure serving separately as the true pulse signal, an analytical model is developed to mathematically relate baseline drift and TVSP to a measured pulse signal. With assumed values of baseline drift and TVSPs, the numerical calculation is conducted in MATLAB. While baseline drift is low-frequency additive noise and can greatly swing a measured pulse signal, TVSP generates relatively small, abrupt distortion (e.g., 1% variation in heart rate and <5% change in pulse amplitude) but rides on each harmonic of the true pulse signal. By taking into account the full involvement of the transmission path in pulse measurement, this analytical model serves as a fundamental framework for quantifying baseline drift and TVSPs from a measured pulse signal in the future.