Assessing heart condition using a consumer-grade wearable PPG wristband: A preliminary study

Abstract

Heart is one of the important parts of human. It regulates the blood circulation which the blood carries oxygen and nutrients to all body parts, carries the metabolic waste such as carbon dioxide back to the heart and deliver it to lungs in order to release it during respiration. Since the function of heart is important, it is needed to be able to check the heart condition periodically. The conventional way to check heart condition is by going to hospital or clinic to perform a clinical health checkup. However, it costs high and sometime takes time to get the result. Thus, an efficient and effective way needs to be investigated. Recently, consumer-grade wristband heart sensors are significantly produced by using an infrared sensor to assess the photoplethysmogram (PPG). By using this method, it enables people to assess the heart activity by only placing the wristband on the arm instead of placing some electrodes on the chest by assessing the electroencephalogram (ECG). This study aims to investigate the possibility of assessing heart condition using a consumer-grade heart wristband sensor (Polar OH1). Ten men were participated in this study. They were instructed to wear the heart wristband sensor on their right arm, then perform a resting state condition by sitting on a chair, do exercise by running around and assessing the heart condition after the exercise. Each activity was conducted for 10 minutes. In this study, we were also used a conventional heart sensor that placed on the participants’ chest during the recording of wristband sensor. There are 14 parameters (MeanRR, SDRR, CVRR, SDSD, RMSSD, NN50, pNN50, VLF, LF, HF, TP, LFHF, LFnorm and HFnorm) where extracted from both PPG and ECG data by using time and frequency-domain analysis. As the result, by using the PPG data obtained from the wristband sensor, 11 parameters have a statistically significant decrement (p < 0.05) in comparison of pre- and post-exercise condition. In addition, the ECG analysis was also showed a similar result compared to the PPG analysis. Therefore, a consumer-grade wristband heart sensor has a possibility to be used as an effective and efficient way in assessing heart condition.