Correlation between lipid profile and finger photoplethysmogram morphological properties among young men with cardiovascular risk: A preliminary result

Photoplethysmogram (PPG) is a non-invasive optical technique that is widely used in many cardiovascular risk assessment and monitoring applications. PPG is the measure of blood volume change recorded from finger, toe, ear lobe, forehead and other location based on the application requirements. PPG has been adopted as a potential non-invasive technique for lipid profiling among young men aged between 20 - 40 years old. A total of 76 subjects were recruited from a non-active lifestyle with less than five thousand steps a day in walking with cardiovascular risk which includes two or more cardiovascular risks factor. The parameter measurements that were taken in the study were the finger PPG signal recording and the cholesterol values which were the HDL, LDL and triglyceride (TG). The morphological analysis clearly differentiates the subjects with different combination of lipid profiles. In this study we are able to categorize subjects into four different groups: a) normal LDL: normal TG; b) high LDL: normal TG; c) normal LDL: high TG; d) high LDL: high TG. The identified morphological classification will need further analysis and automated classification to establish a non-invasive low cost optical based screening method for lipid profiling in future.