Arterial flow measurements during reactive hyperemia using NIRS

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Physiology
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Non-invasive peripheral perfusion assessment is crucial for clinical research.
• Existing methods for quantifying arterial inflow can be invasive or limited in application.

Purpose of the Study:

• To validate a novel non-invasive spectroscopy technique for quantifying forearm arterial inflow.
• To compare the accuracy and reproducibility of this new technique with strain gauge plethysmography (SGP).

Main Methods:

• Utilized near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to measure tissular total hemoglobin variations during reactive hyperemia post-ischemia.
• Simultaneously evaluated 13 subjects using both NIRS and SGP for baseline and serial flow measurements.
• Assessed method reproducibility using intra-class correlation coefficients.

Main Results:

• Both NIRS and SGP demonstrated excellent reproducibility, with identical intra-class correlation coefficients of 0.98.
• The NIRS technique effectively measured changes in forearm tissue oxygenation during reactive hyperemia.
• Serial measurements confirmed the reliability of the NIRS method for flow variation assessment.

Conclusions:

• The novel NIRS technique is a well-suited, non-invasive method for quantitative evaluation of arterial forearm flow.
• This technique offers a reliable alternative for assessing peripheral perfusion in research settings.
• NIRS provides a reproducible and accurate means to measure arterial inflow non-invasively.