Patent Document ID: 5579778
Application ID: 08294938
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for on-line calculation of cardiac output of a patient, said method comprising the steps of: 1.1) coupling at least one sensor to the patient, said sensor being responsive to register changes in blood temperature as part of a thermodilution procedure which includes bolus injection without volume loading of the patient; 1.2) activating the sensor to generate a sequence of on-line signals which register changes occurring in the blood temperature of a patient through direct indicator dilution signal measurements; 1.3) transmitting the on-line signals as input signals to a computer system, including input nodes of a neural network supported by the computer system, which neural network is capable of calculating a continuous output signal corresponding to a parameter value from the on-line, input signals; 1.4) preprocessing the input signals to produce a scaled waveform; 1.5) processing the input signals within the neural network to convert the sequence of input signals to an on-line output signal corresponding to a cardiac output value by applying fixed weighting factors to the input signals; and 1.6) retrieving said fixed weighting factors which were previously generated by applying a training algorithm with respect to previously collected training data comprising neural network input signals and corresponding known cardiac output values.