Featured Podcast - Episode 4: Jack Kartush
IONM Founder, Dr. Jack Kartush, Sounds The Alarm on Persistent Quality and Safety Issues
IONM Founder Sounds The Alarm on Persistent Quality and Safety IssuesAudio Only
Hi There! I’m James
I have been in the neurodiagnostics field for over 25 years. Over those decades, I have learned a lot, met many interesting people, observed significant changes in the industry, and been privileged to impact the lives of countless patients.
At Neuro Dialogues, I hope to share some things I’ve learned and to expose you to some of the excellent colleagues I have had the opportunity to meet and work with over the years.
Identifying and Resolving Types of Noise Contamination in Our Evoked Potential Data: Part 1
Introduction
Over the next several weeks, we will be publishing several posts to help with understanding the various types of noise that can contaminate our evoked potential data. We will learn to identify the noise, understand the source of the noise, and learn strategies for mitigating the noise from our evoked potential signal. This week we discuss what noise is, the two major categories of noise, and then begin to focus on several patient generated noise sources and strategies to eliminate them.
Identifying and Resolving Different Types of Noise Contamination In Our Evoked Potential Data: Part I
When monitoring somatosensory evoked potentials, it is important for the technologist to be able to recognize the various possible recording related noise sources that they may observe in the operating room or the clinical setting. Recording related noises can be divided into two primary categories: patient generated noise sources and externally generated noise sources. Noise issues can be observed in the live data and the live data can be extremely useful in determining the type of noise present in your recordings. We need to be able to recognize the various types of noise, understand the general source of the noise, and develop strategies for dealing with the various noise types that we encounter. One should alway keep in mind that our goal is to minimize noise amplitude and maximize the evoked potential amplitude in and effort to optimize the signal to noise ratio.
Noise Defined
Before we discuss how to resolve noise contamination, we must first understand what is meant by the term “noise”. In relation to evoked potentials, noise is any electrical artifact that does not contain our evoked potential of interest. This could include patient generated electrical activity or externally generated electrical activity. Anything that produces a recordable electrical signature that does not contribute to the evoked potential signal would qualify as noise. Noises…
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