Data Mining Techniques for Analyzing Demographic Factors in Relation to Chronic Pain Patients

G.P NGUYEN; J.A. BIURRUN MANRESA; M. CURATOLO; O.K. ANDERSEN

Aalborg

Conferencia; 15th Nordic-Baltic Conference on Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics (NBC 2011); 2011

The purpose of this study was to analyze the influence of demographic factors on the nociceptive withdrawal reflex (NWR) with chronic pain patients. Different from existing researches, which are mainly concentrated on differences in reflex thresholds, a new approach was proposed. The approach uses original reflex electromyography (EMG) signals as ?features? of patients. Data mining techniques, including statistical measurement and pattern recognition, were applied to these ?features? to evaluate relations among different groups of patients with respect to gender and age. Experiments revealed that these ?features? allowed to separate those groups of patients. Results proved the strong influence of those demo-graphic factors on NWR of chronic pain patients.