referring now to the drawings , the preferred embodiment of the present invention will be described . in the embodiment depicted in fig2 , a patient 10 requiring respiratory support and connected to a ventilator 12 will have an airway flow and pressure sensor 14 , along with possibly a carbon dioxide detector attached at the y - piece of the standard ventilator circuit 16 . these sensors measure the flow , pressure , and partial pressure of carbon dioxide in the gases that pass to and from the patient . these raw signals 18 are preprocessed in a signal processor 20 using analog and digital signal processing to clean the signal , remove sensor biases and offsets , etc . these signals are then processed in a parameter extraction module 22 to calculate a variety of other parameters from the flow , pressure , and co 2 data . for example , tidal volume is computed by integrating the flow into the patient over an inspiratory cycle ; peak inspiratory pressure is calculated by determining the maximum pressure during a breath ; p0 . 1 is calculated by measuring the change in airway pressure during the first tenth of a second of a breath ; respiratory system resistance and compliance can be calculated by adaptively fitting a model , such as a linear model , to the airway pressure , flow , and volume signals ; etc . in an aspect of the invention , a neural network 24 may be provided to model the parameters so that a ventilator may be controlled through controller 26 . in order to create the model ( training phase ) patient information may be collected from one or more patients . the methodology of obtaining the test data ( both input data and desired output data are used to create a model that will predict patient effort ) is as follows : an inflatable balloon is placed into the patient &# 39 ; s esophagus and a catheter is placed in the patient &# 39 ; s endotracheal tube . the balloon is partially inflated and creates a closed circuit that transmits esophageal pressure to a pressure sensor connected to the end of a catheter connected to the balloon . the pressure sensors read the tracheal pressure and the esophageal pressure , which is a surrogate for pleural pressure ( fig1 ). the esophageal pressure drop during normal breathing is plotted on a pressure - volume plot and a loop is created and integrated with a chest wall compliance line to calculate work of breathing . the esophageal pressure may be first cleaned of cardiac interference with an adaptive noise cancellation technique that subtracts a scaled and shifted version of the ecg or plethysmogram from the esophageal pressure . the chest wall compliance can be calculated by paralyzing the patient and measuring the esophageal pressure rise in the circuit with a positive pressure breath . many studies have found that 0 . 1 l / cm h20 is an appropriate average . this plot is called the campbell diagram and is a method for calculating patient inspiratory or physiologic work of breathing from the measured esophageal pressure . the imposed work of breathing may be calculated by integrating the tracheal pressure drop versus volume waveform similar to the total work of breathing ( with the exception of the chest wall compliance ). for both total and imposed efforts , power of breathing is calculated as a per minute average of work of breathing . pressure time product ( ptp ) is measured just like wob except using a pressure — time axis integration instead of pressure — volume . the work of breathing , ( both physiologic and imposed ), the power of breathing , and the pressure time product may be used as output variable for the system . these are the three main “ desired outputs ” of the preferred system . some of the inputs are standard parameters that are calculated in a very straight forward manner , such as spontaneous breathing frequency ( the number of breaths the patient takes per minute ), tidal volume ( the volume of air inspired per breath ), etc . other input parameters are more complex , such as respiratory system resistance , compliance , and airway pressure waveform characteristics . resistance and compliance for example , are typically calculated using a least squares modeling of the pressure , volume , and flow waveforms ( obtained by a standard respiratory monitor using airway pressure and flow sensors ) using the equation : using the flow , volume , and pressure obtained from the flow and pressure sensors , the only unknowns are compliance and resistance and these can be adaptively computed using techniques such as least squares optimization , as noted above . the problem with these methods is that the equation is only valid if the patient is not exerting any effort and the ventilator is responsible for all work of breathing . it has been experimentally determined that better results may be obtained by using an end - inspiratory pause and analyzing the pressure drop with the cessation of flow ( δairway_pressure / δflow ) as resistance , and the tidal_volume /( airway_pressure - peep ) after flow has ceased for the compliance . this method , however , is also inaccurate since often the patient &# 39 ; s effort will disrupt the inspiratory pause . in an aspect of the invention , a method of calculating resistance and compliance may be based on examining the initial pressure rise during the very first few hundredths of a second for each breath . this initial pressure rise is related to only the flow entering the system as volume has not yet accumulated in the lung , and thus reflects only the resistance . after resistance is accurately modeled , compliance can be obtained more accurately with the standard least squares technique mentioned above . during data collection for the training data , the ventilator is adjusted , for example , the pressure support level may be adjusted and measured work of breathing and the other parameters are continuously monitored while changing the ventilator . stable regions of the data are saved and parameters are averaged over 1 - 2 minutes to reduce the noise inherent in biological signals and the breath - to - breath variations . these averaged parameters are then used to create the model . in an embodiment , the model , such as a neural network , is pretrained with clinical data and the input parameters can be collected non - invasively with a standard respiratory monitor . the neural network is trained to predict the physiologic and imposed wob , pob , and ptp using the non - invasively acquired parameters described above ( although invasive parameters may be added to the system , if desired .) once a model having a desired degree of predictability has been achieved and verified , the esophageal pressure data ( wob , pob , ptp ) is no longer needed and the network output , such as an actual breathing effort variable , may be used as an accurate predictor of patient effort . artificial neural networks loosely model the functioning of a biological neural network , such as the human brain . accordingly , neural networks are typically implemented as computer simulations of a system of interconnected neurons . in particular , neural networks are hierarchical collections of interconnected processing elements ( pes ). these elements are typically arranged in layers , where the input layer receives the input data , the hidden layers transform the data , and the output layer produces the desired output . other embodiments of a neural network can also be used . each processing element in the neural network receives multiple input signals , or data values , that are processed to compute a single output . the inputs are received from the outputs of pes in the previous layer or from the input data . the output value of a pe is calculated using a mathematical equation , known in the art as an activation function or a transfer function that specifies the relationship between input data values . as known in the art , the activation function may include a threshold , or a bias element . the outputs of elements at lower network levels are provided as inputs to elements at higher levels . the highest level element , or elements , produces a final system output , or outputs . in the context of the present invention , the neural network is a computer simulation that is used to produce a noninvasive estimate of the quantified patient effort described previously . the neural network of the present invention may be constructed by specifying the number , arrangement , and connection of the processing elements which make up the network . a simple embodiment of a neural network consists of a fully connected network of processing elements . as shown in fig4 , the processing elements of the neural network are grouped into the following layers : an input layer 30 where the parameters collected and / or derived from the airway pressure and flow sensors are inputted to the network ; a hidden layer or layers 32 of processing elements ; and an output layer 34 where the resulting prediction of patient effort 36 is produced . the number of connections , and consequently the number of connection weights , is fixed by the number of elements in each layer 30 , 32 , 34 . the most common training methodology for neural networks is based upon iterative improvement of the system parameters ( normally called weights ) by minimizing the mean squared difference between the desired output and the network output ( mean squared error , mse ). the input is applied to the neural network , the neural network passes the data through its hierarchical structure , and an output is created . this network output is compared with the desired output corresponding to that input and an error is calculated . this error is then used to adjust the weights of the system so that the next time that particular input is applied to the system the network output will be closer to the desired output . there are many possible methodologies to adjust the weights , called the training algorithm . as shown in fig5 , the most common is called back propagation that involves calculating each weight &# 39 ; s responsibility for the error , and calculating a local gradient from this error in order to use a gradient descent learning rule for each weight . based on the foregoing specification , the invention may be implemented using computer programming or engineering techniques including computer software , firmware , hardware or any combination or subset thereof . any such resulting program , having computer - readable code means , may be embodied or provided within one or more computer - readable media , thereby making a computer program product , i . e ., an article of manufacture , according to the invention . the computer readable media may be , for instance , a fixed ( hard ) drive , diskette , optical disk , magnetic tape , semiconductor memory such as read - only memory ( rom ), etc ., or any transmitting / receiving medium such as the internet or other communication network or link . the article of manufacture containing the computer code may be made and / or used by executing the code directly from one medium , by copying the code from one medium to another medium , or by transmitting the code over a network . one skilled in the art of computer science will easily be able to combine the software created as described with appropriate general purpose or special purpose computer hardware to create a computer system or computer sub - system embodying the method of the invention . an apparatus for making , using or selling the invention may be one or more processing systems including , but not limited to , a central processing unlit ( cpu ), memory , storage devices , communication links and devices , servers , i / o devices , or any sub - components of one or more processing systems , including software , firmware , hardware or any combination or subset thereof , which embody the invention . user input may be received from the keyboard , mouse , pen , voice , touch screen , or any other means by which a human can input data into a computer , including through other programs such as application programs . with one particular subset of parameters ( respiratory system resistance , compliance , tidal volume , and frequency ), the present invention predicted power of breathing with a correlation coefficient well over 0 . 90 . similar results were obtained with other combinations of parameters . fig3 shows a plot of predicted versus actual , or measured , power of breathing . a perfect prediction would be indicated by all values having identical x - and y - axis values , and thus would fall on the diagonal black line 40 shown in the fig3 . the wider the spread from this line , the lower the correlation between predicted and actual power of breathing . in this particular prediction , data was obtained from 150 patients collected at shands hospital at the university of florida . the data was collected with multiple ventilator settings for each patient , thus giving us approximately 500 data points in the study . during data collection , respiratory measurements are made continuously and collected . these measurements are stored and later fed to the neural network for training . after the neural network model is trained successfully , the measurements from future are input to the “ trained ” model to produce a non - invasive prediction of actual power of breathing . this prediction of power of breathing is then used in a downstream fuzzy logic system that recommends changes to the ventilator . minute ventilation — the total volume delivered to the patient per minute ( e . g . roughly tidal volume times breath frequency ) in liters . trigger gradient — the slope of the airway pressure drop due to the patient effort that triggers the breath ( e . g . before the ventilator starts providing flow to the patient ) in cm h20 per second . pressure rise time — the time it takes for the flow to reach a maximum and then decay to 80 % of the maximum during a psv ( pressure support ventilation ) breath , as a proportion of total inspiratory time ( no units ). pmus using r spike — the muscle pressure ( as described in the patent ) using the resistance measurement from the initial time of pressure rise ( as described in the patent ) and using the least squares compliance ( cm h20 * sec ). these numbers were recorded continuously with data collection software the values coming from the sensors are smoothed ( time constant of roughly 2 minutes ) and analyzed continuously as known in the art . when no errors , artifacts , or transients are detected , a set of parameters is labeled as “ suitable for prediction ”, at one set of parameters per minute . these numbers are then collected and used to train the neural network . the neural network output is then used to optimally set the ventilator based on the predicted power of breathing and other relevant patient parameters ( such as breathing frequency , tidal volume , and end - tidal co2 ). it should be understood that the examples and embodiments described herein are for illustrative purposes only and that various modifications or changes in light thereof will be suggested to persons skilled in the art and are to be included within the spirit and purview of this application and the scope thereof .