VENTILATION INHOMOGENEITY ANALYSIS USING ELECTRICAL IMPEDANCE TOMOGRAPHY IMAGE PROCESSING

摘要

Efficient evaluation of ventilation inhomogeneity in lungs depend upon repetitive lungs performance measurements of variations in ventilation distribution. These measurements could be employed to equip mechanical ventilators with adaptive capabilities and automate ventilation mode adjustments. In this study, characterization and quantification of ventilation inhomogeneity of lungs of severely sick patients being treated on ventilators in intensive care unit (ICU) have been performed by developing a Graphical User Interface (GUI) based software tool on MATLAB for Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) image processing. Preliminary investigations have been performed to control ventilator by characterizing exact lung performance which prevent alveolar over-distension and cyclic atelectasis, the major causes of ventilator induced lung injury. A huge amount of data from various patients with large span time is evaluated to analyze respective lung performance. The behavior of different regions of lungs has been examined by investigating the pixels of lung image. The global graph pixel of healthy EIT image representing standard maneuver, is compared with pixels which represents diseased lung's tiny regions.