0.05) during spinal cord monitoring. The values of SEP amplitudes at the 2nd stage was higher in comparison with that of the 1st stage(P0.05). There were 5 patients false-positive(3.2％ ) when the values of SEP at pre-incision was used as baseline, while no false-positive case was found in spine exposure baseline. Conclusion Some variability of latencies and amplitudes during different stages of scoliosis surgery is normal. The study results suggest that to determine the SEP after spine exposure as the reference baseline is more reliable for intraoperative spinal cord monitoring.

Evoked potentials(EPs) are nonstationary and have characteristics that vary throughout stimulus trails. With the development of signal processing, new techniques focus on using fewer trails to extract the evoked potentials and to achieve single-trial extraction of evoked potentials finally. Therefore, fewer trials or single-trial estimation of evoked potentials has become the hotspot in the field of biomedical signal processing. In this article, signal processing methods of fast extraction of evoked potentials developed in recent years are reviewed and the approaches based on adaptive filter, wavelet transform, neural network and independent component analysis are discussed.

This paper suggested a new method of spacial risk-trend trace (SRTT) to assess and monitor the spacial balance condition during paraplegic walking assisted by functional electrical stimulation (FES), which main component was a measurement system of upper limb support based on a standard walker. With the support data, the spacial positions of moving center of gravity could be located through the upper body mechanical model and, combining with the definition of walker rolling index, transmitted into SRTT to describe the balance conditions at different axial space. The experimental and clinical results demonstrated the new SRTT method was reliable and real-time. Its potential clinical usefulness in evaluating and monitoring FES-assisted paraplegic walking ability may provide the foundation to enact the relevant national rehabilitation criterions for effective FES usage.
Electric Stimulation Therapy ; instrumentation ; methods ; Humans ; Monitoring, Physiologic ; methods ; Paraplegia ; rehabilitation ; Postural Balance ; physiology ; Self-Help Devices ; Therapy, Computer-Assisted ; methods ; Walking ; physiology