BCG Technology
The sensors inside the pads acquire and interpret signals through Ballistocardiogram (BCG).
In simple terms, a BCG is a measure of the forces generated by the heart and measures mass movements; i.e the mass of the blood which is circulating through the body.
As blood is ejected into the larger vessels, the centre of mass moves towards the head of the body. Blood is then forced downwards through the body to the peripheral vessels further away from the heart so the centre of mass of the body moves towards the feet.
The BCG tracks the a recoil upwards and downwards with each heartbeat in a repeating pattern.
Ballistocardiography is the technique for producing a graphical representation of this repetitive motion in the human body when blood is ejected into the vessels with every beat of the heart. This creates a waveform like in the example below.
The Digital Care Pads use these deferring signals from the BCG waveforms to analyse and interpret the data.
BCG & Blood Pressure
The Care Pad sensors and software can complete contactless blood pressure measurement.
The S1 and S2 signal structure, as shown in the image below, is obtained by filtering and calculating the higher-order differential signals and other pre-processing means, which can effectively obtain the relevant cardiac systole and diastole features. Based on these features, the blood pressure calculation can be performed, and the real-time beat-by-beat blood pressure is obtained by constructing a linear regression equation model.
BCG vs ECG vs PPG
Sleep Analysis
By using the BCG data the system can track all cycles of sleep, including:
- The time you fall asleep
- The difference between light sleep, REM sleep, and deep sleep
- If you wake up in the middle of the night or sleep is disrupted
- Total sleep duration
The software will then put all this data together overtime to record an overall sleep health and analyse the quality of your sleep