A novel method for nonstationary power spectral density estimation of cardiovascular pressure signals based on a Kalman filter with variable number of measurements.

We present a novel parametric power spectral density (PSD) estimation algorithm for nonstationary signals based on a Kalman filter with variable number of measurements (KFVNM). The nonstationary signals under consideration are modeled as time-varying autoregressive (AR) processes. The proposed algorithm uses a block of measurements to estimate the time-varying AR coefficients and obtains high-resolution PSD estimates. The intersection of confidence intervals (ICI) rule is incorporated into the algorithm to generate a PSD with adaptive window size from a series of PSDs with different number of measurements. We report the results of a quantitative assessment study and show an illustrative example involving the application of the algorithm to intracranial pressure signals (ICP) from patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI).