  Hypertension is a potentially unsafe health ailment, which can be indicated
directly from the Blood pressure (BP). Hypertension always leads to other
health complications. Continuous monitoring of BP is very important; however,
cuff-based BP measurements are discrete and uncomfortable to the user. To
address this need, a cuff-less, continuous and a non-invasive BP measurement
system is proposed using Photoplethysmogram (PPG) signal and demographic
features using machine learning (ML) algorithms. PPG signals were acquired from
219 subjects, which undergo pre-processing and feature extraction steps. Time,
frequency and time-frequency domain features were extracted from the PPG and
their derivative signals. Feature selection techniques were used to reduce the
computational complexity and to decrease the chance of over-fitting the ML
algorithms. The features were then used to train and evaluate ML algorithms.
The best regression models were selected for Systolic BP (SBP) and Diastolic BP
(DBP) estimation individually. Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) along with
ReliefF feature selection algorithm outperforms other algorithms in estimating
SBP and DBP with a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 6.74 and 3.59 respectively.
This ML model can be implemented in hardware systems to continuously monitor BP
and avoid any critical health conditions due to sudden changes.
