Why the study?
Wearable health solutions aim to seamlessly track physiological metrics during daily activities, prompting the investigation of potential foot sites for wearable heart rate monitoring.
Does a foot-based PPG heart rate monitoring system provide accurate measurements compared to a smartwatch in healthy volunteers?
Does a foot-based PPG heart rate monitoring system provide accurate measurements compared to a smartwatch in healthy volunteers?
A foot-based PPG heart rate monitoring system measuring at the posterior tibial artery shows high agreement with smartwatch measurements during standing and walking.
Supports foot-based PPG feasibility in healthy volunteers; leaves open validation in clinical populations and real-world conditions.
A recent focus has been on developing wearable health solutions that allow users to seamlessly track their health metrics during their daily activities, providing convenient and continuous access to vital physiological data. This work investigates a heart rate (HR) monitoring system and compares the HR measurement from two potential sites for foot wearable technologies. The proposed system used a commercially available photoplethysmography sensor (PPG), microcontroller, Bluetooth module, and mobile phone application. HR measurements were obtained from two anatomical sites, i.e., the dorsalis pedis artery (DPA) and the posterior tibial artery (PTA), and compared to readings from the Apple Smartwatch during standing and walking tasks. The system was validated on twenty healthy volunteers, employing ANOVA and Bland-Altman analysis to assess the accuracy and consistency of the HR measurements. During the standing test, the Bland-Altman analysis showed a mean difference of 0.08 bpm for the DPA compared to a smaller mean difference of 0.069 bpm for the PTA. On the other hand, the walking test showed a mean difference of 0.255 bpm and -0.06 bpm for the DPA and PTA, respectively. These results showed a high level of agreement between the HR measurements collected at the foot with the smartwatch measurements, with superiority for the HR measurements collected at the PTA.
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Ma’touq et al. (2025) studied this question.
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