Non-invasive intracranial pressure estimation using support vector machine

Intracranial Pressure (ICP) measurements are of great importance for the diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of many vascular brain disturbances. The standard measurement of the ICP is performed invasively by the perforation of the cranial scalp in the presence of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Measuring the ICP in a noninvasive way is relevant for a great number of pathologies where the invasive measurement represents a high risk. The method proposed in this paper uses the Arterial Blood Pressure (ABP) and the Cerebral Blood Flow Velocity (CBFV) - which may be obtained by means of non-invasive methods - to estimate the ICP. A non-linear Support Vector Machine was used and reached a low error between the real ICP signal and the estimated one, allowing an on-line implementation of the ICP estimation, with an adequate temporal resolution.