Assessment of resting-state blood flow through anterior cerebral arteries using trans-cranial doppler recordings

Trans-cranial Doppler (TCD) recordings are used to monitor cerebral blood flow in the main cerebral arteries. The resting state is usually characterized by the mean velocity or the maximum Doppler shift frequency (an envelope signal) by insonating the middle cerebral arteries. In this study, we characterized cerebral blood flow in the anterior cerebral arteries. We analyzed both envelope signals and raw signals obtained from bilateral insonation. We recruited 20 healthy patients and conducted the data acquisition for 15 min. Features were extracted from the time domain, the frequency domain and the time-frequency domain. The results indicate that a gender-based statistical difference exists in the frequency and time-frequency domains. However, no handedness effect was found. In the time domain, information-theoretic features indicated that mutual dependence is higher in raw signals than in envelope signals. Finally, we concluded that insonation of the anterior cerebral arteries serves as a complement to middle cerebral artery studies. Additionally, investigation of the raw signals provided us with additional information that is not otherwise available from envelope signals. Use of direct trans-cranial Doppler raw data is therefore validated as a valuable method for characterizing the resting state.