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DETERMINATION OF SpO 2 BY SPECTRAL ANALYSIS OF DATA FROM A LOW

COST PULSE OXIMETER

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 DETERMINATION OF SpO2 BY SPECTRAL ANALYSIS OF DATA
FROM A LOW COST PULSE OXIMETER
Anant Kumar Jain1, Sujay Deb2, D. Goswami3, Alok Barua4, J. Mukhopadhyay5, and S. Chakrabarti 2

1: Dept. of E&ECE; 2: G. S. Sanyal School of Telecommunications; 3: B. C. Roy Technology Hospital; 4:

Dept. of Electrical Engineering; 5: Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering; Indian Institute of
Technology, Kharagpur-721 302, India
E-mail: anantkumarjain@yahoo.co.in; sujayne03@rediffmail.com;
mahadgos@yahoo.com; alok@ee.iitkgp.ernet.in; jay@cse.iitkgp.ernet.in; saswat@ece.iitkgp.ernet.in

ABSTRACT ranges between 0.77 and 0.99 when oxygen saturation is

Spectral analysis of signals has been suggested as a
means to improve spot computation for pulse oximetry
values. Using techniques of digital signal processing, the
total bandwidth and memory required for transmission
and storage of such signals can be greatly reduced; thus
helping in implementation of a low cost telemonitoring
system. In this paper, we present a small set of pulse
oximetry results, as obtained in the laboratory and
explore the usefulness of FFT in determining the SpO2.
Once the usefulness and limitations of pulse oximetry
are obvious, this instrument may be incorporated as a
part of rural health telemonitoring system.
KEY WORDS
Noninvasive Measurement, Pulse Oximetry, FFT,
Telemonitoring.
1. Introduction:
Pulse oximetry has become an accepted clinical tool in
anesthesia, ICU and newborn monitoring. It may be
useful to integrate pulse oximeter in a multi-sensor cost
effective health telemonitoring system for the rural
health care sector. The health telemonitoring services
should give physicians and the paramedical staff an
option of availing networked resources for monitoring
the health of a patient from distance and in an effective
way. In this paper, our focus has been on designing a
pulse oximeter to determine ‘Saturation percentage of
Oxygen (SpO2)’. It follows that by applying signal
processing techniques to pulse oximetry one can expect
appreciable improvements in measurement.
The measurement of oxygen saturation
present in hemoglobin is called oximetry. Pulse oximeter
is a medical electronic instrument that measures the
oxygen saturation (SpO2) of arterial blood
noninvasively. Such noninvasive measurement is widely
acceptable by the physicians as the correlation
coefficient between pulse oximetry and direct blood
oxygen saturation measurements is usually high and it
greater than 60% [1]. Particularly, pulse oximetry has
become a common tool for monitoring surgery, neonatal
intensive care, oral surgery and dentistry, sleep studies,
hypotension, poor perfusion, and adult anesthesia.
Several other applications of pulse oximetry include
non-intensive health care monitoring, home health care
monitoring, outpatient surgery, sudden infant death
syndrome monitoring and mountain climbing etc.
Pulse oximetry has also been suggested to
reduce cost of ICU monitoring by reducing incidences of
complete blood gas analysis. SpO2 >92% is the target
value to start titration in ventilator-dependent white
patients and slightly higher values in black population
[2].
A low cost telemonitoring system may
incorporate a less expensive pulse oximeter [3]. Episodic
de-saturation is quite common and pulse oximetry may
simply be a marker of increased risk while monitoring
patients for different medical and surgical conditions and
this may reduce overall rate of unanticipated ICU
admissions [2]. Classical pulse oximeters use weighted
moving average techniques to compute SpO2 values.
Major limitations of this method are susceptibility to
motion artifact, background light, and low perfusion
state errors. Spectral analysis has been identified as a
good approach for improving spot computation [4].
In this paper, we report the design of a low
cost pulse oximeter and its use in determining SpO2 for a
small sample set using direct calculation as well as
spectral analysis. The next section describes the system
implemented followed by indicative results and
observations.
2. System description:
The technology of pulse oximetry is based on two basic
physical principles: i) differential absorption of light at
two different wavelengths by oxygenated hemoglobin
and ii) that light signal following tissue transmission has
an a.c or pulsatile component due to changing blood
volume in arteries and a DC component due to
continuous venous flow. Red (R) and infrared (IR)
signals, affected by ambient light, are usually extracted
by a Pulse Oximeter circuit at appropriate sampling
rates. The effects of ambient light on red and infrared
sensor modules have been considerably restricted in the
acquired samples by taking multiple measurements and
then using a program in MATLAB.
The probe consists of two narrow band GaAs
LEDs as sources of light: red (R) LED of 660 nm and an
infrared (IR) LED of 940 nm wavelengths. Matched
photo detectors are used to detect the two wavelengths.
The photo sensors also detect the light, which is
backscattered from the tissues of the skin. Thus the
photo detector converts the pulsatile blood modulated
light signal into proportionate current signal.
Interference from ambient light is measured by keeping
the transmit LED-s off. This interference is eliminated
for both the red and IR modules separately. A detected
signal is sampled at different rates and time for both the
light sources. These signals are then processed to
calculate the oxygen saturation (SpO2) of blood using the
following relationship:
SpO2(%)= 110-25x(R/IR),
where R/IR= (AC/DC)Red/ (AC/DC)IR
The sensor and transmitter are placed in
reflective mode in the probe; one each for red and IR are
used with their LEDs and matched photo detectors. The
signal obtained at the output of this stage is of very low
amplitude and contains the harmonic components of 50
Hz ac electrical noises. A low pass filter with 3 dB roll
off point at 25 Hz has been used for removing the
electrical noise. The oximeter signal is then suitably
amplified. To calculate the R/IR ratio, the a.c component
has been separated from the DC component for each
wavelength. The DC part is obtained by passing a signal
(R or IR) through a Low Pass RC filter whose 3dB
cutoff is very low (0.02 Hz).
The local minima in the a.c component of the
oximetry signal are reliable points of reference, which
can be used to measure the periodicity of the signal. The
heart pulse rate can be determined from this periodicity.
3. Results:
Time Domain Analysis of Pulse Oximetry Signals
Observations have been made over seven
different trials. Fig. 1 shows typical waveforms of a.c
and DC components of a young healthy subject of 25
years using the infrared module. Data were collected
from 7 adult volunteers (six nonsmokers and one
smoker), not suffering from any major lung disease or
blood disorder. Time domain analyses of R/IR values
were performed on the output waveforms taken from the
Pulse Oximeter circuit at both R and IR wavelengths for
each trial. Table-I shows the a.c and DC values
approximated in the time domain and then the values of
the SpO2 computed for each trial.
Spectral Analysis
Frequency domain analysis allows the cardiac
rate and other parametric information to be extracted
more effectively than in time domain analysis. The
techniques of Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and Discrete
Cosine Transform (DCT) have been considered. SpO2
values have been calculated using the DC component
amplitude and the amplitude of the dominant component
at the a.c cardiac frequency. In the frequency domain
transform:
• The zero frequency component amplitude is
selected as DC component.
• The tallest spectral line between 0.5 and 2.5 Hz
has been selected as the a.c cardiac frequency
component amplitude.
Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 show sample magnitude plots for
a subject [Row #1 in Table II]. The figures show the
magnitudes of the harmonic components in dB with
1024 point FFT for R and IR signals respectively,
normalized with respect to the DC value. The DC value
is directly obtained from the received sample set by
using MATLAB program. Only the cardiac frequency
range is shown except the zero frequency magnitude.
The spectral frequency in the range of 0.5-2.5 Hz having
maximum magnitude is highlighted in the figure. As
may be observed, the cardiac frequency values are the
same (1.465) in both figures.
Table I presents the time domain measurements
of various voltage levels for calculation of SpO2 of seven
adult subjects. Table II presents sample frequency
domain measurements of various parameters for two
subjects. It may be noted that both time domain and
frequency domain measurements are in good agreement.
However, the spectral domain measurement and analysis
may be preferred as it has the potential of reduced
complexity real-time implementation. In fact, initial
laboratory-level measurements indicate that it may be
possible to obtain the value of SpO2 using even 64-point
FFT which implies reasonably small data set and easier
computation. Further, use of DCT instead of FFT also
seems to be a good proposition as it may lead to better
spectral resolution and hence better accuracy over FFT.
4. Conclusions:
Time domain and frequency domain analysis
are used to calculate the oxygen saturation. It is observed
that the time domain analysis and spectral analysis
produced comparable results.
 Initial laboratory-level measurements indicate
that it may be possible to measure SpO2 with reasonable
accuracy using even 64-point FFT on a small data set.
Use of DCT instead of FFT also seems to be a good
alternative as it may lead to good spectral resolution and
accuracy over FFT. This may reduce memory
requirement for signal processing and smaller bandwidth
for transmitting such signals simplifying the
implementation of a low cost health telemonitoring
system that is mainly targeted at large-scale patient
monitoring and data collection.

References:

1. Bowes WA 3rd, BC Corke, and J Hulka; Pulse

oximetry: a review of the theory, accuracy, and Fig. 2 Magnitude plot of 1024 point FFT for the Red
clinical applications; Obstetrics & Gynecology, signal
Vol.74, pp. 541-546, 1989
2. Amal Jubran, Pulse Oximetry, Critical Care
Review; Vol.3, No.2, 1999
3. D. Goswami, J. Mukhopadhyay, S. Mukherjee
and S. Chakrabarti; An Approach to Low Cost
Wireless Tele-monitoring System for Rural
Population in Developing Countries. ICMIT, IIT
Kharagpur, 2005
4. T. L. Rusch, R. Sankart and J. E. Scharf; Signal
Processing methods for Pulse Oximetry.Computers
in biology and medicine; vol 26, pp 143-159,1996.

Fig. 3 Magnitude plot of 1024point FFT for the IR

signal

Fig. 1 Waveforms of a.c and DC components of a

young healthy subject of 25 years using the IR module
[Time Scale 500ms/Div]
 Table I: SpO2 measurement in time domain

Red Signal Infra Red Signal R/IR= SpO2(%)=

AC DC+ Ambient DC AC DC+ Ambient DC (AC/DC)Red/ 110-
(p-p) Ambient (V) (V) (p-p) Ambient (V) (V) (AC/DC)IR 25x(R/IR)
(mV) (V) (V) (V)
360 2.8 2.15 0.65 3.5 3.7 0.80 2.9 0.46 98.5

280 2.8 2.25 0.55 3.4 3.8 0.78 3.02 0.452 98.7

240 2.85 2.4 0.45 4.0 4.2 0.8 3.4 0.45 98.75

280 3.0 2.4 0.6 3.0 4.4 0.9 3.5 0.54 96.5

320 2.85 2.25 0.6 2.8 4.0 0.8 3.2 0.6 95

200 2.9 2.35 0.55 2.0 3.2 0.78 2.42 0.44 99

240 2.25 1.10 1.15 1.4 4.7 0.68 4.02 0.60 95

Table II: SpO2 measurement in frequency domain

Red Signal Infra Red Signal Mismatch with

time domain
AC Value DC AC value (in dB) Cardiac DC R/IR SpO2 % measurement
(in dB) (in dB) Freq.(Hz) (in dB)

-121.3 0 -114.8 1.465 0 0.47 98.25 0.76 %

-128.7 0 -124.4 1.465 0 0.61 94.75 0.26 %

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