Characterization of a hybrid diffuse correlation spectroscopy and time-resolved near-infrared spectroscopy system for real-time monitoring of cerebral blood flow and oxygenation

The combination of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) offers the ability to provide real-time monitoring of cerebral oxygenation, blood flow and oxygen consumption. However, measuring these parameters accurately requires depth-sensitive techniques that can remove the effects of signal contamination from extracerebral tissues. Towards this goal, we developed and characterized a hybrid DCS/time-resolved (TR)-NIRS system. Both systems acquire data at three source-detector distances (SDD: 7, 20 and 30 mm) to provide depth sensitivity. The TR-NIRS system uses three pulsed lasers (760, 810, and 830 nm) to quantify tissue optical properties, and DCS uses one continuous-wave, long coherence length (>5 m) laser (785 nm) for blood flow monitoring. The stability of the TR-NIRS system was characterized by continuously measuring the instrument response function (IRF) for four hours, and a warmup period of two hours was required to reduce the coefficient of variation of the extracted optical properties to < 2%. The errors in the measured optical properties were <10% at SDDs of 20 and 30 mm; however, the error at 7 mm was greater due to the effects of the IRF. The number of DCS detectors at each SDD and the minimum count-rate (20 kHz per detector resulting in <10% uncertainty in the extracted blood flow index) were optimized using a homogenous phantom. The depth sensitivity was assessed using a two-layer phantom, with the flow rate in the bottom layer altered to mimic cerebral blood flow.