Continuous measurement of cardiac output using stochastic system identification techniques.

Indicator dilutions techniques offer the most reliable methods of determining clinical cardiac output because of the elastic nature of the cardiac vessels. A catheter-mounted beating filament affords a simple means of supplying "heat" indicator, but is power and temperature limited because of possible patient injury. A stochastic signal processing method using pseudorandom binary infusion of heat offers a process of enhancing the signal to noise sufficiently to facilitate a computation of cardiac output over a reasonable time period (5 min) with a clinically acceptable error.