Blood pressure estimation using single photoplethysmography signal based on ResNet-BiGRU

Abstract Objectives Conventional cuff-based blood pressure (BP) measurement provides only intermittent readings, whereas photoplethysmography (PPG)-based methods enable continuous and noninvasive monitoring. This study aims to develop a deep learning framework for accurate, cuffless BP estimation using a single PPG signal. Methods A hybrid deep neural network, termed ResNet-BiGRU, was developed by integrating residual convolutional blocks with bidirectional gated recurrent units to jointly capture morphological and temporal features. The UCI Cuff-Less Blood Pressure Estimation Dataset (a subset of MIMIC-II), which contains synchronized PPG and arterial blood pressure (ABP) signals from 942 subjects, was used for model training and validation. After applying a 0.5–8 Hz bandpass filter and segmenting into 5 s windows, the data were split 80/20 for training and validation. External evaluation was conducted using the VitalDB dataset, which provides synchronized PPG and ABP recordings from surgical patients under diverse physiological conditions. Results The model achieved mean absolute errors (MAE) of 4.78 mmHg for systolic BP (SBP) and 2.98 mmHg for diastolic BP (DBP) on UCI, and 8.15 mmHg for SBP and 4.59 mmHg for DBP on VitalDB. Conclusions The ResNet-BiGRU model demonstrates accurate, robust, and generalizable cuffless BP estimation, showing strong potential for wearable health monitoring applications.