Ventiliser

Ventiliser segments and characterises neonatal ventilator airway pressure and flow waveforms sampled at 100 Hz from Dräger Babylog VN500 to identify inflations and sub-phases such as inspiration, expiration, pressure rise, pressure plateau, and inspiratory hold.

Key Features:

• Input data: Processes airway pressure and flow waveforms sampled at 100 Hz from Dräger Babylog VN500 ventilators.
• Implementation: Implemented as a Python package.
• Automatic Segmentation: Employs a rule-based algorithm to discretize continuous ventilator data into distinct flow and pressure states and detect individual breaths.
• Phase identification: Identifies sub-phases within each inflation cycle, including inspiration, expiration, pressure rise, pressure plateau, and inspiratory hold.
• Accuracy: Detects over 97% of ventilator inflations and their sub-phases in out-of-sample validation against manually annotated datasets.
• Processing performance: Processes up to 24 hours of ventilation data in approximately two minutes, with processing time increasing linearly for longer recordings.
• Reporting: Generates detailed tables reporting indices for each breath and its sub-phases.
• Visualization: Produces visualizations of individual inflations as waveforms or loops.
• Longitudinal analysis: Enables quantitative analysis of ventilation patterns and ventilator–patient interactions over extended recordings.

Scientific Applications:

• Clinical monitoring: Analysis of ventilation mechanics in neonatal intensive care to characterise ventilatory support in preterm and critically ill infants.
• Research on ventilator–patient interaction: Quantitative study of ventilator–patient interactions and inflation dynamics over long-duration recordings.
• Protocol and device evaluation: Comparative analysis of ventilation periods to support development and assessment of ventilation protocols and technologies.

Methodology:

Uses a rule-based algorithm together with an information gain approach to segment 100 Hz airway pressure and flow data from ventilators into inflations and sub-phases.