Aiming at the defects that the traditional pulse transit time (PTT) detection methods are sensitive to changes in photoplethysmography (PPG) signal and require heavy computation, we proposed a new algorithm to detect PTT based on waveform time domain feature and dynamic difference threshold. We calculated the PTT by using dynamic difference threshold method to detect the R-waves of electrocardiogram (ECG), shortening the main peak detection range in PPG signal according to the characteristics of the waveform time domain, and using R wave to detect the main peak of PPG signal. We used the American MIMIC database and laboratory test data to validate the algorithm. The experimental results showed that the proposed method could accurately extract the feature points and detect PTT, and the PTT detection accuracies of the measurements and the database samples were 99.1% and 97.5%, respectively. So the proposed method could be better than the traditional methods.
