Epidemiological Relationship of Photoplethysmography Signal Derived from Arterial Stiffness and Blood Pressure to Coronary Artery Disease: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Current photoplethysmography (PPG) signals and electronic devices had a lot of attention including analysis of coronary heart disease, ageing of blood vessels, metabolic syndrome, endothelial cell damage, predicting the risk of coronary artery disease, and community-acquired pneumonia. This systematic review aims to analyze current technologies used to measure PPG signals. Analysis of PPG signals with patients involved in coronary artery disease and arterial stiffness and other important interests toward the future trends of computational medicine. The hypothesis is that arterial stiffness is epidemiologically related to the risk of coronary heart disease. A systematic search was conducted in different databases to acquire literature examining the use of PPG with coronary artery disease in terms of epidemiological correlations. Search terms included arterial stiffness, epidemiology, PPG, blood pressure, and coronary artery disease. Articles that do not measure PPG signals on real patients/subjects were excluded from the analysis. A total of 17 studies met the inclusion criteria for this systematic review. Nearly half of the studies used PPG with artificial intelligence/machine learning for analytical study patients, while 18% were PPG studies related to endothelial damage and blood pressure profiles, and another 18% were new development of PPG measurement devices. The rest was PPG analyzing coronary artery disease and atherosclerosis. Systematic review findings reveal PPG applications range from the epidemiology of damaged endothelial cell proliferation to advanced digital PPG analysis. Managing cardiovascular risk and exploring new areas including chronic kidney disease and ovarian cancer must be of interest and considered in future studies.