A somatosensory evoked potential monitoring algorithm using time frequency filtering

A new method of detecting somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEP) is proposed using a time-frequency based windowing to enhance the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the recorded SSEP signals. A sequential computation of maxima and minima was then used to find the location of characteristic positive and negative peaks of the SSEP. The algorithm rejects trials with high peak value as they are corrupted with noise. The performance of the proposed algorithm was observed to be within acceptable clinical margins even with the use of only 30 consecutive trials at a time, thus proving to be very efficient for intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring during surgical procedures.