Human Gastrointestinal Pressure Data Analysis Based on Wavelet Transform

Background Recently with the improvement of people’s living standards, eating fine, irregular life, lack of exercise and increased mental stress, the incidence of constipation is increasing. Gastrointestinal (GI) tract’s pressure information can reflect the dynamic disorder of gastrointestinal physiological and pathological changes, which is important in early diagnosis and treatment of constipation. However, how to diagnose constipation with the wireless capsule is still not clear. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the GI tract’s pressure data and compare the gastrointestinal motility index (MI) and the gastrointestinal transit time (GTT) in healthy subjects and patients with constipation to provide some reference for clinical diagnosis. Methods The sixteen subjects (ten healthy subjects and six patients with constipation) were recruited. Firstly, the large abnormal data caused by cough and electromagnetic noise were filtered by the threshold processing method. Secondly, the high frequency noise caused by breathing and other disturbance was removed by wavelet analysis. The GI tract’s peristalsis wave was extracted. Then the MI and GTT of the sixteen subjects were computed. Key Results The patients with constipation showed significantly higher MI and longer GTT compared with healthy subjects. The results show that the wavelet transform provides a new way to research human gastrointestinal activities. Key-Words: Wavelet Transform; Gastrointestinal transit time; Wireless Capsule; Gastrointestinal Motility Index