A compound pressure signal acquisition system for multichannel wrist pulse signal analysis

In traditional Chinese pulse diagnosis (TCPD), to analyze the health condition of a patient, a practitioner should put three fingers on the wrist of the patient to adaptively feel the fluctuations in the radial pulse at the styloid processes. Thus, for comprehensive pulse signal acquisition, we should efficiently and accurately capture pulse signals at different positions and under different pressures. However, most conventional pulse signal acquisition devices can only capture signal at one position and under a fixed pressure, and thus only capture limited pulse diagnostic information. In this paper, we propose our novel solution to the problems of sensor positioning, sensor array design, pressure adjustment, and mechanical structure design, resulting in a compound system for multichannel pulse signal acquisition. Compared with the other systems, our system provides a systematic solution to sensor positioning, is effective in measuring the width of the pulse, and can capture multichannel pulse signals together with subsignals under different hold down pressures. Experimental results show that multichannel signals can achieve higher classification performance than single-channel signals.