A preliminary laboratory investigation of air embolus detection and grading using an artificial neural network.
CONCLUSIONS
Processed digitized Doppler signals abstracted from recordings during continuous air infusion in dogs were used to train a neural network to estimate air embolism infusion rates.


BACKGROUND
Precordial Doppler is a sensitive technique for detecting venous air embolism during anesthesia, but it requires constant attentive listening. Since neural networks are particularly well suited to the task of pattern recognition, we sought to investigate this technology for detection and grading of air embolism.


METHODS
Air was infused into peripheral veins of four anesthetized dogs at rates of 0.025, 0.05, 0.10, 0.25, 0.50 and 1.0 ml-1.kg-1.min-1 while digital recordings of the precordial Doppler ultrasound signal were collected. The frequency content of the recordings was determined by Fourier analysis. The output of the Fourier transform was the input to a neural network. The network was then trained to estimate the air infusion rate.


RESULTS
The correlation coefficient between the size of the air embolism and the air infusion rate was greater than r2 = 0.93 for each of the four animals in the study when the network was trained using the data for all four dogs. When the data from a dog was withheld from the training set and used only for testing the correlation coefficients ranged from r2 = 0.75 to r2 = 0.27. For frequencies below 250 Hz, the acoustic energy tended to fall as the air infusion rate increased. The opposite occurred at frequencies above 325 Hz.


CONCLUSIONS
Neural network processing of the precordial Doppler signal provides a quantitative estimate of the size of an air embolism.
Strong
K
K
Department of Bioengineering, University of Utah Health Science Center, Salt Lake City 84132, USA.
Westenskow
D R
DR
Fine
P G
PG
Orr
J A
JA
D000758:Anesthesia / Q000009:adverse effects; D000818:Animals; D004285:Dogs; D004618:Embolism, Air / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D008432:Mathematical Computing; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D018608:Ultrasonography, Doppler