Dicrotic Notch Identification: a Generalizable Hybrid Approach under Arterial Blood Pressure (ABP) Curve Deformations

Dicrotic Notch (DN) is a distinctive and clinically significant feature of the arterial blood pressure curve. Its automatic identification has been the focus of many kinds of research using either model-based or rule-based methodologies. However, since DN morphology is quite variant following the patient-specific underlying physiological and pathological conditions, its automatic identification with these methods is challenging. This work proposes a hybrid approach that employs both model-based and rule-based approaches to enhance DN detection’s generalizability. We have tested our approach on ABP data gathered from 14 pigs. Our result strongly indicates 36% overall mean error improvement with maximum 52% and −11% accuracy enhancement and degradation in extreme cases.