Portable And Non-Invasive Monitoring Techniques Of Traumatic Brain Injury And Its Clinical Application

As a common traumatic injury,the morbidity and mortality of traumatic brain injury（TBI）are very high,seriously endangering public health.It is urgent to develop a system that allows real-time and precise monitoring of the intracranial pressure（ICP）,cerebral oxygen,cerebral blood flow and other parameters of patients with TBI in clinics.The system can thus be utilized to monitor the patient’s disease progression as well as surgical treatment outcome.Currently,major approaches for ICP measurement mainly rely on minimally invasive techniques.Noninvasive methods that can serve as reliable alternatives for ICP monitoring and simultaneously provide other critical physiological parameters are in their high demands.In this paper,considering the deep biological tissue penetration capability and noninvasive intrinsic feature of near-infrared（NIR）light,a NIR spectroscopy（NIRS）-based real-time monitoring system for brain injury was designed.Real-time measurement of brain tissue parameters such as ICP and other corresponding physiological signals can be achieved by this system.Our system has also been approved for its clinical safety and effectiveness,which met the basic requirements for clinical application of neurosurgery.The main work and innovative points of this paper include:1.A NIRS-based noninvasive monitoring system for brain injury patients was designed and established.This system could noninvasively monitor the changes of ICP and other brain tissue oxygenation parameters in patients with brain injury,including oxyhemoglobin（HbO₂）,deoxyhemoglobin（Hb）and oxygen saturation（SO₂）.Hardware and embedded software were contained in the system.Hardware included probes,light source drivers,signal processing modules,MCU and related peripherals,power supplies and printed circuit board designed for the entire system.The design of embedded software included functions for data collection,data storage,data transfer,and data display,which was based onμC/OS-III.2.The blood oxygen parameters measured by our system were calibrated and verified for its accuracy.By cooperating with Anqing Municipal Hospital,clinical data was collected using our system,based on which calibration experiment for ICP measurement was accomplished subsequently.3.The noninvasive brain injury monitoring system was utilized in clinical trials to monitor the oxygenation parameters of brain tissue and ICP of brain injury patients after neurosurgical operation.The reliability of our system for brain injury patients was analyzed by comparing data obtained by our system with that by clinical standard instrument together with patient’s prognosis.Our system was determined for its clinical reliability for noninvasive brain injury monitoring by providing the changes of HbO₂,Hb and SO₂ of brain tissue,as well as the ICP of brain injury patients.