金沢大学大学院自然科学研究科The daily monitoring of health conditions at home is a very important subject not only as an effective scheme for the early diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular and other diseases, but also for the prevention and control of such diseases. From this point of view, we have been developing a fully automated "non-conscious" monitoring system for home healthcare. In this paper, we describe the structural details of a newly developed blood pressure (BP) measurement system built into a toilet seat and some results obtained using the system. The principle used for BP measurement was the volume-oscillometric method. A reflectance-type photop-lethysmographic sensor was installed in an appropriate position on the toilet seat, and it was automatically lifted and lowered using a newly designed helicoid-type actuator. Systolic (SBP) and mean BP (MBP) were obtained using the arterial volume pulsation signal obtained by the sensor. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the BP measurements, simultaneous measurements were carried out using two types of commercially available BP monitors (upper arm and wrist). Simultaneous measurement using an "invasive technique" via catheterization to the right brachial artery was also conducted. From the results obtained (bias [s.d.] for SBP; Upper arm: -1.20 [7.90] mmHg, Wrist: 0.44 [7.28] mmHg, Invasive: -0.41 [4.91] mmHg, bias [s.d.] for MBP; Upper arm: 4.40 [6.91] mmHg, Wrist: 5.07 [8.04] mmHg, Invasive: 3.68 [5.69] mmHg), reasonable accuracy of the present system was clearly demonstrated. This system, which requires no cumbersome procedures for BP measurement such as cuff setting, proper positioning of measuring site and so on, appears to be a useful means for long-term home healthcare monitoring
