Date of Graduation


Document Type


Degree Name

Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering

Degree Level



Biomedical Engineering


Jensen, Morten


Peripheral venous pressure (PVP) can be used to measure blood volume status with a minimally invasive procedure. The pediatric cohort undergoing surgery for pyloric stenosis was studied to determine how arterial circulation and patient factors linearly impact PVP. The relationship between PVP and these confounding factors can provide valuable information for future PVP researchers.

To investigate the linear relationship between PVP and electrocardiogram (ECG) the waveforms were transformed into the frequency domain. A power spectral density was plotted, and the Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated for both preoperative and intraoperative settings. Linear regression models were computed for PVP and varying patient factors to determine the variation of venous pressure explained by confounding patient factors.

For the preoperative setting, the significant correlation coefficients at the heart rate frequency, F1, were ρ= 0.96 and ρ = 0.42. While the intraoperative correlation coefficients at F1 were ρ= 0.96 and ρ = 0.64. The linear regression models for preoperative had R2 values of 0.294, 0.0462, and 0.165 for the factors of patient number, weight, and heart rate, respectively. For the intraoperative linear regression models, the R2 values were 0.93, 0.765, 0.452, 0.436, and 0.93 for patient number, weight, heart rate, dosage, and fluids, respectively. Residuals for all linear regression models showed non-normalcy for the error.

The Pearson’s correlation coefficient shows a linear relationship at the heart rate frequency between the venous and arterial circulation, even under the influence of anesthetics. PVP researchers must consider how changes in the arterial circulation affect the venous pressure waveform. However, the linear regression equations are not a valuable model for the variation of PVP due to patient factors, and other models will be investigated in the future.


peripheral venous pressure, correlation between venous and arterial circulation, linear regression models

Available for download on Saturday, April 22, 2023