Signal quality measures for unsupervised blood pressure measurement

Accurate systolic and diastolic pressure estimation, using automated blood pressure measurement, is difficult to achieve when the transduced signals are contaminated with noise or interference, such as movement artifact. This study presents an algorithm for automated signal quality assessment in blood pressure measurement by determining the feasibility of accurately detecting systolic and diastolic pressures when corrupted with various levels of movement artifact. The performance of the proposed algorithm is compared to a manually annotated reference scoring (RS). Based on visual representations and audible playback of Korotkoff sounds, the creation of the RS involved two experts identifying sections of the recorded sounds and annotating sections of noise contamination. The experts determined the systolic and diastolic pressure in 100 recorded Korotkoff sound recordings, using a simultaneous electrocardiograph as a reference signal. The recorded Korotkoff sounds were acquired from 25 healthy subjects (16 men and 9 women) with a total of four measurements per subject. Two of these measurements contained purposely induced noise artifact caused by subject movement. Morphological changes in the cuff pressure signal and the width of the Korotkoff pulse were extracted features which were believed to be correlated with the noise presence in the recorded Korotkoff sounds. Verification of reliable Korotkoff pulses was also performed using extracted features from the oscillometric waveform as recorded from the inflatable cuff. The time between an identified noise section and a verified Korotkoff pulse was the key feature used to determine the validity of possible systolic and diastolic pressures in noise contaminated Korotkoff sounds. The performance of the algorithm was assessed based on the ability to: verify if a signal was contaminated with any noise; the accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of this noise classification, and the systolic and diastolic pressure differences between the result obtained from the algorithm and the RS. 90% of the actual noise contaminated signals were correctly identified, and a sample-wise accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of 97.0%, 80.61% and 98.16%, respectively, were obtained from 100 pooled signals. The mean systolic and diastolic differences were 0.37 ± 3.31 and 3.10 ± 5.46 mmHg, respectively, when the artifact detection algorithm was utilized, with the algorithm correctly determined if the signal was clean enough to attempt an estimation of systolic or diastolic pressures in 93% of blood pressure measurements

Space VLBI Observations of 3C 279 at 1.6 and 5 GHz

We present the first VLBI Space Observatory Programme (VSOP) observations of the gamma-ray blazar 3C 279 at 1.6 and 5 GHz. The combination of the VSOP and VLBA-only images at these two frequencies maps the jet structure on scales from 1 to 100 mas. On small angular scales the structure is dominated by the quasar core and the bright secondary component `C4' located 3 milliarcseconds from the core (at this epoch). On larger angular scales the structure is dominated by a jet extending to the southwest, which at the largest scale seen in these images connects with the smallest scale structure seen in VLA images. We have exploited two of the main strengths of VSOP: the ability to obtain matched-resolution images to ground-based images at higher frequencies and the ability to measure high brightness temperatures. A spectral index map was made by combining the VSOP 1.6 GHz image with a matched-resolution VLBA-only image at 5 GHz from our VSOP observation on the following day. The spectral index map shows the core to have a highly inverted spectrum, with some areas having a spectral index approaching the limiting value for synchrotron self-absorbed radiation of 2.5. Gaussian model fits to the VSOP visibilities revealed high brightness temperatures (>10^{12} K) that are difficult to measure with ground-only arrays. An extensive error analysis was performed on the brightness temperature measurements. Most components did not have measurable brightness temperature upper limits, but lower limits were measured as high as 5x10^{12} K. This lower limit is significantly above both the nominal inverse Compton and equipartition brightness temperature limits. The derived Doppler factor, Lorentz factor, and angle to the line-of-sight in the case of the equipartition limit are at the upper end of the range of expected values for EGRET blazars.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, emulateapj.sty, To be published in The Astrophysical Journal, v537, Jul 1, 200

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Observations of Intrahour Variable Quasars: Scattering in our Galactic Neighbourhood

Interstellar scintillation (ISS) has been established as the cause of the random variations seen at centimetre wavelengths in many compact radio sources on timescales of a day or less. Observations of ISS can be used to probe structure both in the ionized insterstellar medium of the Galaxy, and in the extragalactic sources themselves, down to microarcsecond scales. A few quasars have been found to show large amplitude scintillations on unusually rapid, intrahour timescales. This has been shown to be due to weak scattering in very local Galactic ``screens'', within a few tens of parsec of the Sun. The short variability timescales allow detailed study of the scintillation properties in relatively short observing periods with compact interferometric arrays. The three best-studied ``intrahour variable'' quasars, PKS 0405-385, J1819+3845 and PKS 1257-326, have been instrumental in establishing ISS as the principal cause of intraday variability at centimetre wavelengths. Here we review the relevant results from observations of these three sources.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Astronomical and Astrophysical Transaction

Extremely Anisotropic Scintillations

A small number of quasars exhibit interstellar scintillation on time-scales less than an hour; their scintillation patterns are all known to be anisotropic. Here we consider a totally anisotropic model in which the scintillation pattern is effectively one-dimensional. For the persistent rapid scintillators J1819+3845 and PKS1257-326 we show that this model offers a good description of the two-station time-delay measurements and the annual cycle in the scintillation time-scale. Generalising the model to finite anisotropy yields a better match to the data but the improvement is not significant and the two additional parameters which are required to describe this model are not justified by the existing data. The extreme anisotropy we infer for the scintillation patterns must be attributed to the scattering medium rather than a highly elongated source. For J1819+3845 the totally anisotropic model predicts that the particular radio flux variations seen between mid July and late August should repeat between late August and mid November, and then again between mid November and late December as the Earth twice changes its direction of motion across the scintillation pattern. If this effect can be observed then the minor-axis velocity component of the screen and the orientation of that axis can both be precisely determined. In reality the axis ratio is finite, albeit large, and spatial decorrelation of the flux pattern along the major axis may be observable via differences in the pairwise fluxes within this overlap region; in this case we can also constrain both the major-axis velocity component of the screen and the magnitude of the anisotropy.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, MNRAS submitte