NONINVASIVE PROBING OF THE NEUROVASCULAR SYSTEM IN HUMAN BONE/BONE MARROW USING NEAR-INFRARED LIGHT

Abstract

Understanding the mechanisms of interaction between bone/bone marrow, circulatory system and nervous system is of great interest due to the potential clinical impact. In humans, the amount of knowledge in this domain remains relatively limited due to the extreme difficulty to monitor these tissues continuously, noninvasively and for long or repeated periods of time. A typical difficult task would be, for example, to continuously monitor bone/bone marrow blood perfusion, hemoglobin oxygen saturation or blood volume and study their dependence on the activity of the autonomic nervous system. In this review article, we want to show that near-infrared light might be utilized to solve these problems in part. We hope that the present analysis will stimulate future studies in this domain, for which near-infrared light appears as the best available technology today.