Current oscillometric devices for monitoring central blood pressure (BP) maintain the cuff pressure at a constant level to acquire a pulse volume plethysmography (PVP) waveform and calibrate it to brachial BP levels estimated with population average methods. A physiologic method was developed to further advance central BP measurement. A patient-specific method was applied to estimate brachial BP levels from a cuff pressure waveform obtained during conventional deflation via a nonlinear arterial compliance model. A physiologically-inspired method was then employed to extract the PVP waveform from the same waveform via ensemble averaging and calibrate it to the brachial BP levels. A method based on a wave reflection model was thereafter employed to define a variable transfer function, which was applied to the calibrated waveform to derive central BP. This method was evaluated against invasive central BP measurements from patients. The method yielded central systolic, diastolic, and pulse pressure bias and precision errors of −0.6 to 2.6 and 6.8 to 9.0 mmHg. The conventional oscillometric method produced similar bias errors but precision errors of 8.2 to 12.5 mmHg (p ≤ 0.01). The new method can derive central BP more reliably than some current non-invasive devices and in the same way as traditional cuff BP.
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