Estimation of latency changes for evoked potentials with morphological variations

The latency of somatosensory evoked potentials (EPs) can be an important indicator of stress on the nervous system. It represents actual conduction delay along the neural pathway. Changes in nervous system status may result in changes in latency. Since adaptive algorithms are capable of tracking time-varying parameters, an adaptive latency estimation algorithm has been developed to estimate the transient latency changes. Studies show that nervous system changes may cause EP waveform changes as well, it is thus necessary to test the robustness of the adaptive algorithm to such morphological changes. The authors demonstrate the sensitivity of the adaptive algorithm to waveform changes through data analysis.