A Gaussian Mixture Model to detect suction events in rotary blood pumps

In this paper, we introduce a new suction detection approach based on online learning of a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) with constrained parameters to model the reduction in pump flow signals baseline during suction events. A novel three-step methodology is employed: i) signal windowing, ii) GMM based classification and iii) GMM parameter adaptation. More specifically, the first 5 second segment is used for the parameter initialization and the consequent 1 second windows are classified and used for model adaptation. The proposed approach has been tested in simulation (pump flow) signals and satisfactory results have been obtained.