Ballistocardiography Based on Optical Fiber Sensors

Ballistocardiography (BCG) is a non-invasive method for measuring the reaction force of the human body to the ejection of blood at each cardiac cycle. It is now being the subject of renewed research interest due to recent technological advancement in the field of sensors. In this paper, we summarize our work on BCG with optical fiber sensors for various applications in the past 6 years. These include wearable BCG and non wearable BCG. In the non wearable BCG, there are bed based BCG, chair based BCG and standing BCG for various applications including measurements of heart rate, respiratory rate, sleep monitoring, cuff-less blood pressure measurement and perioperative pediatric vital signs monitoring. We report the first novel application of microbend fiber sensor for simultaneous measurements of heart rate, respiratory rate and body posture/position.