Cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR), i.e., the ability of cerebral blood vessels to dilate or constrict in response to changes in blood oxygen content or neuronal demand, is a biomarker of vascular health. CVR assessment usually involves administration of a controlled vasoactive stimulus so the reactive ability of the brain can be easily observed. The traditional way of doing this requires patients to undergo an MRI while performing what is called a “hypercapnia challenge” where they inhale carbon dioxide. In pediatric patients or after sever brain injury, this protocol is often infeasible or contraindicated. In recent work now out in Neurophotonics, Kyle R. Cowdrick et al. explored the application of Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy (DCS) for CVR assessment in a cohort of healthy adults across multiple, more tolerable, experimental paradigms vs. a gold standard hypercapnia challenge. Specifically, they compared CVR calculated from DCS measurements taken from subjects breathing normally at rest or during a timed breath-hold challenge with hypercapnia. They found that applying general linear models to minimize influence of systemic hemodynamics on the brain signal measured with DCS improved the agreement between these more tolerable assessment methods and the gold-standard. This promising result suggests that DCS coupled with a milder vasoactive stimulus can allow CVR assessment in previously inaccessible patient groups.
-
Archives
- July 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- January 2023
- October 2022
- July 2022
- May 2022
- November 2021
- August 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- January 2021
- August 2020
- April 2020
- November 2019
- October 2019
- August 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- February 2019
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- February 2018
- November 2017
- October 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- October 2016
- July 2016
- February 2016
- September 2015
- August 2015
- June 2015
-
Meta