Application of Minimum Variance Beamformer for Estimation of Tip Position of a Nasogastric Tube

Application of Minimum Variance Beamformer for Estimation of Tip Position of a Nasogastric Tube

When a patient is not capable of eating a meal due to difficulty in swallowing, a nasogastric tube can be inserted through the nose to the stomach to provide nourishment in liquid form. However, it is possible to insert the tube into the lungs by mistake. In this paper, we apply a minimum variance beamformer that is commonly used in brain signal source detection to estimate the position of the magnet attached to the tip of a nasogastric tube. To reduce the computational cost, the signal source power is calculated with two different resolutions. Furthermore, the signal source power calculations are performed in parallel. The position may be estimated in less than 1.0 s, making this method suitable for detecting the tip position of a nasogastric tube in real time.

当患者因吞咽困难无法进食时，可经鼻腔插入鼻胃管至胃部，以提供液态营养。然而，鼻胃管有可能误插入肺部。在本文中，我们应用一种常用于脑信号源检测的最小方差波束形成器来估计附着在鼻胃管尖端的磁体位置。为降低计算成本，以两种不同分辨率计算信号源功率。此外，信号源功率计算是并行进行的。该位置可在不到1.0秒内估计出来，这使得这种方法适用于实时检测鼻胃管的尖端位置。