Estimation of pulse transit time using time delay estimation techniques

The pulse wave propagation is the important electromechanical characteristics of biomedical signals. Conventionally the pulse propagation features are extracted by estimating the propagation time delay between two points called pulse transit time(PTT). The PTT estimation is based on the phase analysis of the cross power spectrum and bispectrum between the ECG and pulse signal. In this paper, The generalized cross correlation and bispectrum methods are discussed. The PTT is estimated from ECG and pulse waveform by measuring time between R peak of ECG to systolic peak of pulse signal. Simulation using MITBIH polysomnographic database and carried out to compare the two approches. It is shown that the bispectral modified phase transform provides the better estimates of pulse transit time.