Non Invasive Assessment of Intracranial Pressure and Cerebrovascular Status after Traumatic Brain Injury

Given the critical need for early detection of TBI and the potentially associated increase in ICP a requirement exists for a system capable of detecting elevated ICP and TBI, especially cerebrovascular status. The requirement is for a combination small, portable, robust fieldable system, and this response to that requirement is a combination of non-invasive acoustic techniques for determining elevated ICP as well as cerebrovascular status. One system, the Brain Acoustic Monitor, is based on an active stimulation of skull resonance features along with a passive monitoring of arterial response to determine elevated ICP and cerebrovascular anomalies. The other, cochlear microphonic potential (CM), determines the degree of ICP increase. Both approaches have been evaluated against calibrated ICP monitors in one case human subject and the other animal studies. Phase I will combine the systems to detect both elevated ICP as well as set forth a method to approximate a real value. This in anticipation of Phase II where the system will be evaluated against invasive ICP monitors, TCD, and CTA, prior to a final system integration.