Application of the Complexity and Clustering Analysis in Diagnosis and Classification of Functional Constipation

Functional constipation (FC) is a common and frequent problem for the general population. The diagnosis process of FC is complicated, which is not convenient for clinical application. This paper proposed a new method in diagnosing FC and its subtypes. Wireless electronic capsule (WEC) was applied to obtain pressure signal of the human gastrointestinal (GI) tract, and the complexity of intestinal pressure signal was calculated based on Lempel-Ziv (L-Z) complexity calculation method. Then the complexity of colonic pressure signal (CCPS) and the complexity of rectal pressure signal (CRPS) were used as characteristic values for clustering analysis. The results indicated that the method proposed in this paper has a good performance on determining FC and its subtypes.