RAQ: A Noise-Resistant Calibration-Independent Compliance Surrogate.

The intracranial pressure (ICP)-volume relationship contains important information for diagnosing hydrocephalus and other space-occupying pathologies. We aimed to design a new parameter which quantifies the relationship and can be calculated from overnight recordings.The new parameter, the respiratory amplitude quotient (RAQ), characterizes the modulation of the pulse amplitude by the respiratory wave in the ICP time course. RAQ is defined as the ratio of the amplitude of the respiratory wave in the ICP signal to the amplitude of the respiration-induced wave in the course of the heartbeat-dependent pulse amplitude.We tested RAQ on synthetically generated ICP waveforms and found a mean difference of <0.5% between the calculated values of RAQ and the theoretically determined values. We further extracted RAQ from datasets obtained by overnight recording in hydrocephalus patients with a stenosis of the aqueduct and a comparison group finding a significant difference between the RAQ values of either group.