Estimation of the brain temperature during the hypothermia treatment of hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy in newborns

Abstract

In this work, actual temperature measurements taken during the hypothermia treatment of the hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy of a newborn are used for the solution of a state estimation problem. The objective is to sequentially estimate the newborn brain temperature during the local cooling treatment, by the application of the Sampling Importance Resampling (SIR) algorithm of the particle filter. A procedure is also proposed in this work to obtain individual geometric models for each patient, by using the mass, length and perimeter of the head measured after birth. The heat transfer model considered the body divided into spherical or cylindrical elements, representing the head, thorax, abdomen, arms, and legs. The results revealed that the SIR algorithm was accurate for the estimation of the body temperature, not only at locations where measurements were available, but also in internal regions of great interest for the hypothermia treatment, such as the brain.