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Updated: Mar 21, 2026

A Detailed Protocol for Physiological Parameters Acquisition and Analysis in Neurosurgical Critical Patients
Published on: October 17, 2017
Automatic Calculation of Hydrostatic Pressure Gradient in Patients with Head Injury: A Pilot Study
Laura Moss1,2, Martin Shaw3,4, Ian Piper3,4
1Department of Clinical Physics and Bioengineering, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Glasgow, UK. Laura.Moss@glasgow.ac.uk.
Abstract:
The non-surgical management of patients with traumatic brain injury is the treatment and prevention of secondary insults, such as low cerebral perfusion pressure (CPP). Most clinical pressure monitoring systems measure pressure relative to atmospheric pressure. If a patient is managed with their head tilted up, relative to their arterial pressure transducer, then a hydrostatic pressure gradient (HPG) can act against arterial pressure and cause significant errors in calculated CPP.To correct for HPG, the arterial pressure transducer should be placed level with the intracranial pressure transducer. However, this is not always achieved. In this chapter, we describe a pilot study investigating the application of speckled computing (or "specks") for the automatic monitoring of the patient's head tilt and subsequent automatic calculation of HPG. In future applications this will allow us to automatically correct CPP to take into account any HPG.
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