Blood Flow Electro-Optical Simulator for Calibration of the Photoplethysmography Devices

Abstract

Development of the advanced optical noninvasive diagnostic methods in medicine requires establishment of the working measures simulating properties of the real biotissues storing and reproducing the measured value units for calibrating the devices and ensuring the measurements uniformity. A working measure is developed that simulates the pulsating blood flow in the skin for adjusting and calibrating the optical flowmetrics and photoplethysmography devices. The measure is based on a polymer-dispersed liquid crystal film acting as the electro-optical modulator. Its operation principle is in aligning the liquid crystals when voltage is applied to it, reducing the light-scattering properties, and thereby increasing the transmittance. This makes it possible to simulate the photoplethysmography signal variable component caused by the blood pulsation. Based on the classical two-stream Kubelka --- Munk model, a theoretical computation of the optical flows emitted from the measure surface and registered by the devices was performed. The paper shows that the value of the optical flow backscattered from the measure is comparable with the value of flow from the real skin, and the variation range of the reproduced signal modulation depth exceeds that for the signals from the skin. An electronic control unit for the modulator operation is developed, it is programmed in the LabView environment from a personal computer. The paper demonstrates the measure ability to reproduce signals at different harmonics in the frequency range of 0--10 Hz to simulate different forms of the pulse waves making it suitable for calibrating sensors of the diagnostic devices

Please cite this article in English as:

Lapitan D.G., Rogatkin D.A., Kapustin L.S. Blood flow electro-optical simulator for calibration of the photoplethysmography devices. Herald of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Series Instrument Engineering, 2025, no. 3 (152), pp. 27--48 (in Russ.). EDN: SDOFRU

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