Noninvasive Optical Monitoring of Cerebral Blood Flow and EEG Spectral Responses after Severe Traumatic Brain Injury: A Case Report

• Main Authors: Chien-Sing Poon, Benjamin Rinehart, Dharminder S. Langri, Timothy M. Rambo, Aaron J. Miller, Brandon Foreman, Ulas Sunar
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-08-01
• Series: Brain Sciences
• Subjects: cerebral blood flow and oxygenation; diffuse correlation spectroscopy; EEG; traumatic brain injury; neurointensive care unit; neuromonitoring
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/11/8/1093

Survivors of severe brain injury may require care in a neurointensive care unit (neuro-ICU), where the brain is vulnerable to secondary brain injury. Thus, there is a need for noninvasive, bedside, continuous cerebral blood flow monitoring approaches in the neuro-ICU. Our goal is to address this need through combined measurements of EEG and functional optical spectroscopy (EEG-Optical) instrumentation and analysis to provide a complementary fusion of data about brain activity and function. We utilized the diffuse correlation spectroscopy method for assessing cerebral blood flow at the neuro-ICU in a patient with traumatic brain injury. The present case demonstrates the feasibility of continuous recording of noninvasive cerebral blood flow transients that correlated well with the gold-standard invasive measurements and with the frequency content changes in the EEG data.