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Updated: Jun 23, 2026
Cerebral Blood Oxygenation Measurement Based on Oxygen-dependent Quenching of Phosphorescence
Published on: May 4, 2011
A new semi-invasive method for two dimensional pO2 measurements of cortical structures
Jan Warnat1, Gregor Liebsch, Eva-Maria Stoerr
1Department of Neurosurgery, University of Regensburg, Franz-Josef-Strauss-Allee 11, 93053 Regensburg, Germany. Jan.Warnat@klinik.uni-regensburg.de
Background:
Measuring brain oxygenation in patients with TBI or SAH is of major interest. We present a new semi-invasive method for two dimensional measurements of cortical pO2.
Methods:
For this feasibility study, a porphyrin containing sensor foil was placed directly on the cortex of intubated and variably ventilated Wistar rats. The sensor was excited with a light pulse and pictures of the foil's pO2 dependant emissions were captured with a CCD camera. After online data processing, two-dimensional maps of cortex oxygenation were displayed and analyzed using ROIs (here: arteriole, vein, parenchyma) with a display rate of 7 Hz. The size of one single measurement pixel was 0.03 x 0.03 mm2.
Findings:
The mean pO2 over cortex arterioles was 20.3 +/- 0.69, over veins 17.1 +/- 0.5 and over parenchyma 9.1 +/- 0.6 (mmHg +/- SD). The arterial pO2 showed a good correlation to the pO2 in the ROIs (r = 0.46-0.72, p < 0.0001, n = 198). Comparing groups with different paO2 and paCO2 we found significantly different pO2 values in the ROIs of the cortex.
Conclusions:
This prototype is capable of obtaining cortical pO2 maps with excellent temporal and spatial resolution and provides simultaneous imaging of the cortex structures.
