Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Galway, H91 TK33 Galway, Ireland.
Translational Medical Device Lab, University of Galway, H91 TK33 Galway, Ireland.
Sensors (Basel). 2024 May 24;24(11):3357. doi: 10.3390/s24113357.
Birth asphyxia is a potential cause of death that is also associated with acute and chronic morbidities. The traditional and immediate approach for monitoring birth asphyxia (i.e., arterial blood gas analysis) is highly invasive and intermittent. Additionally, alternative noninvasive approaches such as pulse oximeters can be problematic, due to the possibility of false and erroneous measurements. Therefore, further research is needed to explore alternative noninvasive and accurate monitoring methods for asphyxiated neonates. This study aims to investigate the prominent ECG features based on pH estimation that could potentially be used to explore the noninvasive, accurate, and continuous monitoring of asphyxiated neonates. The dataset used contained 274 segments of ECG and pH values recorded simultaneously. After preprocessing the data, principal component analysis and the Pan-Tompkins algorithm were used for each segment to determine the most significant ECG cycle and to compute the ECG features. Descriptive statistics were performed to describe the main properties of the processed dataset. A Kruskal-Wallis nonparametric test was then used to analyze differences between the asphyxiated and non-asphyxiated groups. Finally, a Dunn-Šidák post hoc test was used for individual comparison among the mean ranks of all groups. The findings of this study showed that ECG features (T/QRS, T Amplitude, Tslope, Tslope/T, Tslope/|T|, HR, QT, and QTc) based on pH estimation differed significantly ( < 0.05) in asphyxiated neonates. All these key ECG features were also found to be significantly different between the two groups.
出生窒息是一种潜在的死亡原因，也与急性和慢性疾病有关。传统的即时监测出生窒息的方法（即动脉血气分析）具有高度侵入性和间歇性。此外，替代的非侵入性方法，如脉搏血氧仪，由于可能存在虚假和错误的测量，因此可能存在问题。因此，需要进一步研究探索窒息新生儿的替代非侵入性和准确监测方法。本研究旨在调查基于 pH 值估计的突出 ECG 特征，这些特征可能用于探索窒息新生儿的非侵入性、准确和连续监测。使用的数据集包含同时记录的 274 段 ECG 和 pH 值。对数据进行预处理后，使用主成分分析和 Pan-Tompkins 算法对每个片段进行处理，以确定最显著的 ECG 周期并计算 ECG 特征。进行描述性统计以描述处理后数据集的主要性质。然后使用 Kruskal-Wallis 非参数检验分析窒息组和非窒息组之间的差异。最后，使用 Dunn-Šidák 事后检验进行所有组的平均秩之间的个体比较。本研究的结果表明，基于 pH 值估计的 ECG 特征（T/QRS、T 振幅、T 斜率、T 斜率/T、T 斜率/|T|、HR、QT 和 QTc）在窒息新生儿中存在显著差异（<0.05）。在两组之间也发现所有这些关键 ECG 特征都存在显著差异。
