A Provacative Test to Determine Brain Compliance in the Management of Patients with Hydrocephalus
Non-invasive techniques to explore intracranial compliance and pressure have been extensively explored in recent years. Previous techniques have used expensive technologies to make these measurements, often with difficulty. We present a novel, inexpensive provocative test to observe trends in intracranial compliance measurement targeted towards the treatment and management of hydrocephalus. Two techniques are proposed which derive data from the digital and supraorbital arteries as well as tympanic membrane displacement. This requires the use of two photo-plethysmographic sensors and a TMD sensor. A common tilt table apparatus is used to methodically and artificially increase intracranial pressure to stress the cranial system during the test. The results from this test are computed using a digital signal processing algorithm to determine phase difference between the waveforms. Further research is also proposed.
hydrocephalus, fast Fourier transform, intracranial pressure, intracranial compliance, tilt table, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations