Paperdoi:10.64898/2026.08.19.745616
Temple PPG Morphology Demonstrates a Stronger Cardiovascular Age Signal Than Wrist Sites
bioRxiv preprint
TL;DR
89 pulse-morphology features (timing/amplitude/area, ratios, derivative ratios, spectral harmonic ratios) compared between an in-house temple-worn device (superficial temporal artery) and the public Microsoft Aurora-BP wrist dataset, testing each feature's association with age. 14 robust age correlates at the temple vs 3 at the wrist, spanning more morphology categories and with larger effect sizes. Different devices and cohorts per site, so site and device are confounded.
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Abstract
A bstract
The features of the PPG (photoplethysmography) morphology are known to reflect age-related cardiac and vascular changes. In most contemporary wearables, PPG signals are acquired from distal sites such as the wrist and finger. The superficial temporal artery (STA), accessible at the temple region, is reached via a shorter arterial path from the aortic root than the radial circulation, and may therefore carry hemodynamic and aging information with less distance-dependent attenuation. We hypothesized that the morphology of the PPG at temple region (STA) would show stronger and more numerous age correlates than the PPG at the wrist. To test this, we extracted a common set of 89 pulse-morphology features, spanning raw-waveform timing/amplitude/area measures, ratios among them, derivative-based ratios, and spectral harmonic-ratio features. We compared an in-house temple-worn device which has PPG as one of the sensors, with a publicly available Microsoft Aurora-BP wrist-worn PPG dataset, and tested each feature’s association with age. We identified 14 robust age correlates at the temple region, compared to 3 at the wrist. The temple’s correlates spanned multiple morphological categories and showed a larger age-association than at the wrist. These results support the hypothesis that the temple region may be a more robust PPG measurement site than the wrist to extract age-related cardiovascular information, which motivates further investigation of temple-based cardiovascular sensing.
Verbatim from the publisher's DOI record (opens in a new tab) · Publisher licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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APA
Liu, D., Dutta, A., & Nadig, S. (2026). Temple PPG Morphology Demonstrates a Stronger Cardiovascular Age Signal Than Wrist Sites. bioRxiv preprint. https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.08.19.745616
BibTeX
@misc{liu2026temple,
title = {{Temple PPG Morphology Demonstrates a Stronger Cardiovascular Age Signal Than Wrist Sites}},
author = {Liu, Deland and Dutta, Anirban and Nadig, Sachin},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {bioRxiv preprint},
doi = {10.64898/2026.08.19.745616}
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