Assessment of cerebral autoregulation using time-domain cross-correlation analysis

Time domain cross-correlation analysis of pre-filtered mean arterial blood pressure (MABP) and mean cerebral blood flow velocity (MCBFV) was applied to assess the cerebral autoregulation (CA). Beat-to-beat time series of spontaneous arterial blood pressure and cerebral blood flow velocity were obtained from 13 young normal volunteers with the Finapres device and the transcranial Doppler for periods of approximately 5 min in the supine position. Cross-correlation functions (CCFs) were estimated using a 64 beat wide moving window. Mean CCF patterns were obtained for each subject and for the entire population. The MABP and MCBFV signals were bandpass filtered in the very low-frequency range (VLF, 0.015-0.07 Hz), low-frequency range (LF, 0.07-0.15 Hz) and high-frequency range (HF, 0.15-0.40 Hz) before applying CCF for the purpose of studying the effect of different bandwidths on the resulting mean CCFs. Results revealed that the corresponding time lags of the peak values of the MABP-MCBFV CCFs increased significantly between the LF and HF frequency ranges (LF: -1.20+/-0.91 s, HF: -0.07+/-0.42 s,p < 0.001; paired sign test). The left-shift (negative lag) of the CCF peak between MABP and MCBFV is a result of the phase-lead property. The increasing time lag of the CCF peak indicated evidence of the autoregulatory disturbance. The CCF of pre-filtered spontaneous MABP and MCBFV could be a useful tool to estimate the CA dynamic response.