A Noninvasive Method for Monitoring Intracranial Pressure During Postural Changes

Intracranial hypertension (IH) is an important cause of secondary brain injury, and its association with poor outcomes has been extensively demonstrated. Pathological intracranial hypertension is defined as a persistent rise in intracranial pressure (ICP) to above 20-25 mmHg, with symptoms such as headaches, loss of consciousness, seizures, and focal deficits, as well as ischemic damage. Therefore, monitoring of ICP is invaluable in the management of these symptoms. However, invasive measurements of ventricular pressure (requiring a surgical procedure) are considered the gold standard, thus limiting the practicality of ICP measurements. Vivonics, Inc., is developing a noninvasive optical device to assess ICP for use by emergency medical personnel, called IPASS: Intracranial Pressure Assessment and Screening System. IPASS uses four near-infrared sensors to measure hemodynamic oscillations at four different locations. Three sensors are used as reference signals and one sensor is used to detect cerebral blood volume oscillations. Pulse arrival delays between the measured cerebral blood volume oscillations and the blood volume oscillations measured at the three reference locations are calculated and correlated with estimated ICP changes, herein modulated by specific positional changes (in a head-down maneuver).