Novel long-term implantable blood pressure monitoring system

A novel long-term implantable blood pressure monitoring system is proposed. The system employs an instrumented elastic cuff wound around a blood vessel, operating in a linear "diameter v.s. pressure" region of the vessel for real time blood pressure monitoring. The elastic cuff is made of soft bio-compatible rubber, filled with bio-compatible insulating fluid with an immersed MEMS pressure sensor. The MEMS sensor detects the vessel blood pressure waveform with a constant scaling factor, independent of the cuff bias pressure exerting on the vessel. This technique avoids vessel insertion and also substantially minimizes vessel restriction due to the soft cuff elasticity, thus attractive for minimizing long-term adverse biological effects. A scaled up prototype system is developed. It is used to verify and demonstrate the concept.