Cuffless estimation of systolic blood pressure for short effort bicycle tests: the prominent role of the pre-ejection period.

This paper investigates the specific contributions of the pre-ejection period (PEP) and pulse transit time (PTT) for blood pressure estimation based on the pulse wave methodology. We show that in short-term physical stress tests, PEP dominates PTT variations raising the question of a suitable blood pressure calibration. A model using a generalized pulse wave velocity achieves acceptable accuracy for systolic blood pressure estimation, given our experimental conditions.