DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/MY9M-YF13
Defense Date
2013
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science
Department
Biomedical Engineering
First Advisor
Ou Bai
Abstract
We studied Heart Rate Variability (HRV) evolution during therapeutic hypothermia in newborns with hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) using spectral analysis. We hypothesized that HRV measures are predictive of neurological outcome in babies with HIE. Non-stationarity in the data causes inaccurate quantification of the spectral power. A modification was proposed to power spectral analysis approach to mitigate the effect of non-stationarity. The modified and the standard approaches were applied to cardiac beat-to-beat intervals of newborns receiving hypothermia treatment. The performance of the approaches in distinguishing the RRi dynamics of two groups of newborns was assessed using area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Our results showed that the modified spectral analysis distinguished the two groups of neonates better than the standard approach. These results may be useful in identifying the deteriorating physiology of the infants receiving hypothermia treatment early in time and strategize alternate interventions for them.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
December 2013