Morphological landmark detection in arterial blood pressure and intracranial pressure: Preliminary procedures for intracranial pressure waveform analysis

Intracranial hypertension of patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) is fatal. Quick and appropriate control of intracranial pressure (ICP) are highly related to the outcomes of patients. One way to observe and/or predict the elevation of ICP is morphological analysis of ICP pulse waveforms. In order to investigate the shape of ICP pulse in a beat-by-beat fashion, the major landmarks were detected by the algorithms in this study. ICP recordings extracted from five TBI patients were used for analysis. Three landmarks, peak, trough and flat, were identified. The algorithm successfully detected landmarks in both of ABP and ICP pulses. The landmarks found by this method can be applied to examine the morphological characteristics of ICP pulse waveforms.