Analysis of intraluminal impedance measurements

Intraluminal impedance is an emerging technique to monitor the esophagus so that the occurrence of gastroesophageal reflux episodes can be observed. The impedance traces of the esophagus have wide variations which correspond to the occurrence of activities such as swallow or reflux that cause the impedance to change. This paper presents a technique to detect and classify reflux episodes from intraluminal impedance. Evaluation of the technique based on 660 h of combined data from 30 patients showed that the proposed methodology can detect episodes in the esophagus to a sensitivity of 89% with positive predictivity of 83%.