Abstract: In traditional Chinese medicine, doctors usually apply different pulse-taking depths according to the patient's physique, and then make a diagnosis based on the observed pulse waves. The most common pulse-taking instrument to implement this diagnostic technique is to mechanically extract the pulse by applying fixed pressures for all patients. However, this instrument does not take into account the patients ’ individual characteristics such as gender, age, and skin thickness. In this study, a new method was proposed to find the suitable pulse-taking depth that incorporated the individual characteristics of patients. Firstly, the equivalent stiffness of the skin was extracted from the contact pressure and sensor displacement. Then, the stiffness information was used to identify the suitable pulse-taking depth. To verify our method, pulse waves from 6 subjects were measured at three positions of Cun, Guan and Chi. The pulse feature approximate entropy and peak-to-peak value were extracted of each measurement and the appropriate pulse depth was determined by the new method. The results showed that the pulse-taking depths at different positions of different individuals determined by the new method could fall in the region with large peak-to-peak value and low approximate entropy, which meant that the pulse wave was strong and stable. Thus, the proposed new method could be used to find the suitable pulse-taking depth to overcome the influence of individual characteristics and position of pulse-taking. This method was expected to provide new ideas for in-depth study of the objective of pulse diagnosis in traditional Chinese medicine and the development of new pulse-taking instruments.