Bedside monitoring of tissue perfusion is important for a variety of diseases. For cerebral monitoring, cerebral perfusion is important especially for traumatic brain injury, hydrocephalus, sepsis, and stroke, where inadequate perfusion can lead to ischemia and neuronal damage. Diffuse optical methods, such as near-infrared spectroscopy and diffuse correlation spectroscopy, are non-invasive optical techniques which can be used to measure cerebral changes at the bedside. This talk will focus on these optical techniques as applied to clinical measurements to monitor patients and predict treatment outcome.
