Monitoring heart activity using ultra‐wideband radar. Issue 16 (1st August 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Cho, H.‐S.; Choi, B.; Park, Y.‐J.
• Is Part Of: Electronics letters. Volume 55:Issue 16(2019)
• Page Start: 878
• Page End: 881
• Publication Date: 2019-08-01
• Subjects: patient monitoring -- medical signal processing -- ultra wideband radar -- ultra wideband communication -- cardiology -- digital filters; ultra‐wideband impulse radar -- heart rate -- radar pulses -- human body -- reflected pulses -- time axis -- specific time intervals -- accumulated pulses -- heartbeat information -- greyscale image -- similar patterns -- entire image -- significant patterns -- timing information -- patterns appear -- monitoring heart activity -- ultra‐wideband radar; Electronics -- Periodicals; 621.381
• DOI: 10.1049/el.2019.1438
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0013-5194

Abstract

Abstract : This Letter focuses on extracting the heartbeat information using ultra‐wideband impulse radar, and a new method that can extract not only the heart rate but also the timing of the heartbeat with high accuracy is proposed herein. As the first step towards achieving this goal, radar pulses are projected towards a human body, and the reflected pulses are accumulated along the time axis at specific time intervals. The accumulated pulses pass through a digital filter to reveal the heartbeat information and are converted to a greyscale image. A pattern that reflects the heartbeats is used as a template to find similar patterns in the entire image. After all the significant patterns are found, the timing information corresponding to the locations where the patterns appear is calculated, and this indicates the time when the heartbeats actually occur. From the experimental results, the authors confirmed that the proposed method could estimate the heart rate with high accuracy and extract the timing information of the heartbeats.