Prediction of mean arterial blood pressure with linear stochastic models.

A model-based approach that integrates known portion of the cardiovascular system and unknown portion through a parameter estimation to predict evolution of the mean arterial pressure is considered. The unknown portion corresponds to the neural portion that acts like a controller that takes corrective actions to regulate the arterial blood pressure at a constant level. The input to the neural part is the arterial pressure and output is the sympathetic nerve activity. In this model, heart rate is considered a proxy for sympathetic nerve activity. The neural portion is modeled as a linear discrete-time system with random coefficients. The performance of the model is tested on a case study of acute hypotensive episodes (AHEs) on PhysioNet data. TPRs and FPRs improve as more data becomes available during estimation period.