Modeling of artifacts in the wrist photoplethysmogram: Application to the detection of life-threatening arrhythmias
Birutė Paliakaitė, Andrius Petrėnas, Andrius Sološenko, Vaidotas Marozas
Abstract
A model for simulating motion-induced artifacts in the wrist photoplethysmogram (PPG) is proposed for the purpose to improve realism of PPG models. The database of day-long PPGs, acquired during cardiac rehabilitation, is used to extract artifact characteristics, which further serve as a basis for modeling artifacts in simulated PPGs with life-threatening arrhythmias. Depending on the recording, 14–49% of the PPG duration is corrupted by artifacts, mostly due to device displacement, forearm and hand motion. The artifact type influence on the performance of a life-threatening arrhythmia detector shows that the sensitivity drops by 45–48% for extreme bradycardia and by 13–32% for ventricular tachycardia. Poor contact causes 2–4 times more false alarms of ventricular tachycardia compared to the other artifact types under investigation. Simulation of realistic artifacts encountered in activities of daily living allows to comprehensively investigate arrhythmia detectors and understand the artifact types most negatively affecting detection performance. The proposed PPG artifact model is of importance for developing and testing artifact-robust arrhythmia detectors.