Title: Higuchi fractal dimension as a measure of analgesia

Authors: Sanjeev Kumar; Amod Kumar; Anjan Trikha; Sneh Anand; Prashanth Gantla

Addresses: Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, Sector 30-C, Chandigarh – 160030, India. ' Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, Sector 30-C, Chandigarh – 160030, India. ' Department of Anesthesiology, All Indian Institute for Medical Sciences, Ansari Nagar, New Delhi – 110029, India. ' Centre for Biomedical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Hauz Khas, New Delhi – 110016, India. ' Department of Physics, National Institute of Technology, Warangal – 506052, India

Abstract: Avoidance of patients' intraoperative awareness and explicit recall of pain during surgery is important. Conventional methods of depth of anesthesia (DoA) monitoring involve physiological monitoring which are influenced by the administered anesthetic drugs. Balanced anesthesia is fusion of its four components analgesia, amnesia, motor blockade and hypnosis. One major component is analgesia which means inability to feel pain during surgery. Pain cannot be estimated any single physio-pathological signal. A proper analgesia index proportional to the degree of pain experienced by the patient is required. Electroencephalogram (EEG) is a reliable means to determine real time DoA. In the present study, EEG of 12 volunteer subjects was recorded during relaxed and during pain. It was found that the Higuchi fractal dimension (HFD) feature of EEG from parietal region of brain reflects the sensation of pain and gives an overall accuracy of 95% in determining the pain experienced by the patient.

Keywords: EEG; Higuchi fractal dimension; HFD; balanced anaesthesia; electroencephalograms; depth of anesthesia; anesthesia monitoring; amnesia; motor blockade; hypnosis; patient pain; surgery.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMEI.2012.045304

International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics, 2012 Vol.4 No.1, pp.66 - 72

Published online: 11 Aug 2014 *

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