Simulation of time domain diffuse correlation spectroscopy (TD-DCS) performance for measuring brain blood flow in the presence of noise with realistic sources and detectors (Conference Presentation)

Abstract

The ability of diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) to measure tissue perfusion paves the way for monitoring cerebral blood flow non-invasively. However, during measurements on human forehead, the measured blood flow index (BFi) is susceptible to contamination due to the blood flow in extracerebral tissue. Time domain DCS addresses this problem by selecting photons based on their travel time to obtain BFi at various depths. We have determined the gate start time(s) and width(s) that can lead to optimal sensitivity of BFi to brain blood flow during actual measurements on human subjects using commercially available hardware with accurate noise modelling.