A 4-Layer Supervising Unit for Extra-Corporal Circulation

Extra-corporal Circulation Support Systems (ECCS) are used in cardiac surgery on a daily basis. Surgeons and perfusionists supervise patients´ vital signals such as heart rate or blood pressure and ensure secure and errorless operation of the ECCS. Latest developments clear the way to use an ECCS for emergency circulatory resuscitation in non-clinical environments, even when trained staff is sparse and when there is no standard monitoring setup. There is urgent need for computerized ECCS supervision. In this work we highlight the requirements and specifications of a supervising unit (SU) that monitors patient and machine status during extra-corporal circulation. We describe a conceptual framework architecture based on a 4-layer design, that implements such a SU and furthermore introduce a template matching algorithm based on cross-correlation and the Hilbert transformation for real-time patient monitoring. We show how the algorithm integrates into the framework and illustrate that such autonomous supervising instances can help to increase system safety and quality of care.