Medical signal processing in the neonatal intensive care unit using Motorola´s DSP56001

Premature infants in the neonatal intensive care unit respond to medications and treatments by altering the frequency patterns of their physiological processes. This alteration can be seen in impedance respiratory waveforms, ventilator sensed airway pressure waveforms, electroencephalograms and blood pressure waveforms. The DSP56001 neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) system is used to record, process and evaluate these signals over long periods of time. Pilot studies have been conducted in the tertiary neonatal intensive care unit at the Geisinger Medical Center. Respirogram data have been collected from the impedance respiratory monitors of small neonates, along with airway pressure data from the ventilators. The DSP56001 NICU system is able to resolve respiratory waveform data into component frequencies; this data has been recorded and graphically displayed.