ESTIMATION OF VENTRICULAR VOLUME AND ELASTANCE FROM THE ARTERIAL-PRESSURE WAVE-FORM

We propose that it is possible to estimate cardiovascular parameters f rom the arterial pressure waveform, including ventricular maximal elas tance and end-diastolic volume, if cardiac output is also known. We te sted this hypothesis by means of a parameter estimation algorithm appl ied to simulated arterial pressure signals. The program first estimate d three coefficients representing products of passive parameters from the diastolic part of the simulated arterial pressure waveform. Second , it estimated three parameter products pertaining to the ventricular function from the systolic part of the waveform. Third, mean blood flo w was entered, enabling the program to compute individual parameters. This program was tested on 200 computer-generated arterial pressure si gnals, obtained by simulating the model with random but bounded parame ters. Correlation between estimated parameters with those actually use d in the simulations was excellent. Even though the value of this comp uter simulation is limited to the simplified model used and requires e xperimental validation, it demonstrates that the technique is theoreti cally feasible.