Vascular age - Intro¶
In this case study we will explore a particular approach for assessing vascular age from PPG and ECG signals: pulse arrival time measurement.
The background to this task is presented in the Background section of this book - in particular see the Physiology section.
For further reading, see this article on assessing vascular age from the PPG.
Example¶
This notebook provides an initial example for this case study. Briefly, the code:
Extracts data from the Pulse Transit Time PPG dataset.
Extracts pulse arrival times for each subject in this dataset.
Extracts reference ages
Looks at the association between pulse arrival time and age
It is intended to provide a starting point for further work, and is by no means perfect. We would be grateful for any improvements via pull requests!
Critical appraisal of the technique¶
When appraising the use of pulse arrival time for vascular ageing assessment, perhaps consider:
What would influence performance, e.g.
the path of the pulse wave (e.g. heart to finger in this case study)
pulse arrival time vs. pulse transit time, considering the effect of pre-ejection period
the PPG acquisition equipment (e.g. wavelength of light used, transmission vs. reflectance)
How could this experiment be improved, e.g.
reference parameters (how helpful is chronological age?)
cohort studied (consider their ages, and health status)
generalisability to the real-world setting
How could the signal processing be improved, e.g.
filtering (how does this impact measurements?)
How could the modelling be improved?
Is the assumption of a linear relationship between pulse arrival time and vascular age suitable?
Conversion from pulse arrival time to pulse wave velocity?