Initial In-Vitro Trial for Intra-Cranial Pressure Monitoring Using Subdermal Proximity-Coupled Split-Ring Resonator

摘要

Intra cranial pressure (ICP) monitoring is used in treating severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients. All current clinical available measurement methods are invasive presenting considerable social costs. This paper presents a preliminary investigation of the feasibility of ICP monitoring using an innovative microwave-based non-invasive approach. A phantom mimicking the dielectric characteristics of human tissues of the upper part of the head at low microwave frequencies is employed together to a proof-of-concept prototype based on the proposed approach consisting in a readout system and a sub-dermally implanted passive device, both based in split ring resonator techniques. This study shows the potential of our approach to detect two opposite pressure variation stages inside the skull. The employed phantom model needs to be improved to support finer variations in the pressure and better phantom parts, principally for the skull mimic and the loss tangent of all mimics.