Heart Rate Detection using a Piezoelectric Ceramic Sensor: Preliminary results

Real-time vital signs monitoring, particularly heart rate, is essential in today's medical practice and research. Heart rate detection allows the doctor to monitor the patient's health status to provide immediate action against possible cardiovascular diseases. We present a possible alternative to traditional heart rate signal monitoring systems, a cardiac pulse system using low-cost piezoelectric signal identification. This system could benefit health care and develop continuous pulse waveform monitoring systems. This paper introduces a heartbeat per minute (BPM) cardiac pulse detection system based on a low-cost piezoelectric ceramic sensor (PCS). The PCS is placed under the wrist and adjusted with a silicone wristband to measure the pressure exerted by the radial artery on the sensor and thus obtain the patient's BPM. We propose a signal conditioning stage to reduce the sensor's noise when acquiring the data and make it suitable for real-time BPM visualization. As a comparison, we performed a statistical test to compare the low-cost PCS with types of traditional sensors, along with the help of 21 volunteers. Experimental results show that the data collected by the PCS, when used for heart rate detection, is highly accurate and close to traditional sensor measurements. Therefore, we conclude that the system efficiently monitors the cardiac pulse signal in BPM.