A new approach for investigating intracranial pressure signal: filtering and morphological features extraction from continuous recording

Nowadays, the IntraCranial Pressure (ICP) monitoring has become the most common method of investigation for both traumatic and chronic neural pathologies. ICP signals are typically triphasic, that is in a single waveform 3 subpeaks can be identified. This work outlines a new algorithm to identify subpeaks from the ICP recordings and to extract a number of 20 meaningful parameters trends. The validity of the implemented method has been proved through a comparison between the automatic subpeaks identification by the algorithm and the manually marked subpeaks by a neurosurgeon. The automatic marking system has identified subpeaks for the 63.74% (mean value) of pulse waves, providing the position and amplitude of each identified subpeak within a tolerance of ± 7 samples. This automatic system provides a features set to be used by classification software to obtain more precise and easier diagnosis in all those cases that involve brain damages or diseases.