Investigation of Cerebral Autoregulation Using Time-Frequency Transformations

Abstract

The authors carried out the study of the state of systemic and cerebral hemodynamics in normal conditions and in various neurosurgical pathologies using modern signal processing methods. The results characterize the condition for the mechanisms of cerebral circulation Institute of Computer Science and Control, Higher School of Cyber-Physical Systems and Control regulation, which allows for finding a solution to fundamental and specific clinical problems for the effective treatment of patients with various pathologies. The proposed method is based on the continuous wavelet transform of systemic arterial pressure and blood flow velocity signals in the middle cerebral artery recorded by non-invasive methods of photoplethysmography and transcranial doppler ultrasonography. The study of these signals in real-time in the frequency range of Mayer waves makes it possible to determine the cerebral autoregulation state in certain diseases before and after surgical interventions. The proposed method uses a cross-wavelet spectrum, which helps obtain wavelet coherence and a phase shift between the wavelet coefficients of systemic arterial pressure signals and blood flow velocity in the Mayer wave range. The obtained results enable comparing the proposed method with that based on the short-time Fourier transform. The comparison showed that the proposed method has higher sensitivity to changes in cerebral autoregulation and better localization of changes in time and frequency.