A model for an inverse power constitutive law for cerebral compliance

This work provides a model that links the commonly used inverse power relationship between cerebral compliance and intracranial pressure to some mechanical properties of distal cerebral veins. The underlying model of the compliance is based on a mechanism whereby the distal cerebral blood vessels are assumed to be the main compliant part of the brain and cerebrospinal fluid volume changes are accommodated by blood displacement into or out of these vessels. This simplified model is not intended to produce a highly accurate prediction of the intracranial pressure-volume curve, which is best achieved by a numerical solution of more complicated models, but rather to justify the phenomenological inverse power law and to provide a basic interpretation of cerebral elasticity, reference pressure and exponent of the constitutive law in terms of underlying mechanical parameters.