{"id":5900,"date":"2012-07-18T22:26:46","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T22:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2012\/?p=5900"},"modified":"2012-07-18T22:26:46","modified_gmt":"2012-07-18T22:26:46","slug":"an-electronically-steered-wearable-transcranial-doppler-ultrasound-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2012\/an-electronically-steered-wearable-transcranial-doppler-ultrasound-system\/","title":{"rendered":"An Electronically Steered, Wearable Transcranial Doppler Ultrasound System"},"content":{"rendered":"

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) occurs in over 1.4 million persons annually in the United States [1<\/a>] <\/sup>.\u00a0 Monitoring of a patient\u2019s cerebrovascular state following TBI is used in guiding therapy and mitigating secondary injury [2<\/a>] <\/sup>.\u00a0 Such monitoring, however, often relies on bulky capital equipment and a skilled operator, thus restricting its use to limited clinical environments (typically neurocritical care units).\u00a0 This project seeks to develop a low-power, miniaturized transcranial Doppler (TCD) ultrasound system for measuring cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV) in support of continuous cerebrovascular monitoring.<\/p>\n

The system architecture, as illustrated in Figure 1, employs multi-channel transceiver electronics and a two-dimensional transducer array to permit electronic steering of the ultrasound beam.\u00a0 A first-generation discrete eight-channel TCD prototype is shown in Figure 2.\u00a0 Further revisions of the prototype system will increase channel count for improved beam steering functionality.\u00a0 Advanced beam steering algorithms will allow for autonomous vessel location, thereby obviating the need for manual transducer alignment and operator expertise.\u00a0 The wearable system will permit monitoring of cerebrovascular state in a wide variety of contexts that are currently unfeasible under standard measurement modalities.<\/p>\n\n\t\t