Ultrasound based non-invasive assessment of raised intracranial pressure

Head injuries or other neurological disorders can cause the pressure inside the head to increase so much that the blood supply to the brain is prevented. Without early enough treatment, this can result in permanent brain damage or death. Intracranial pressure is at present measured invasively, specifically by drilling a hole in the skull and inserting a pressure gauge. This must be done in the operating room by highly specialized personnel, with a high cost per exam and with some risk of infection and bleeding. Since it can take a long time from high pressure occurs untill it is possible to conduct an investigation, acute trauma could couse brain injury even before the patient reaches the operating room. In collaboration with neurosurgeons at the University of Cape Town, SINTEF has developed a new method that can provide a measure of intracranial pressure using ultrasound images collected from an ultrasound probe held over the patient's eyelid. The potential of this method is huge: health-care costs can be reduced as this is a far cheaper investigation; it is non-invasive, which reduces the risk of complications and burden for the patient; far more patients can be examined, and much earlier in the disease, for example in an ambulance on the site of an accident. In addition to the obvious benefits for patients and their families, this will also give a great reduction in social costs. Preliminary results - published in "Neurosurgery", a leading international journal - show that our method is able to detect a significant difference between groups of patients with high versus normal ICP. The main purpose of this project is to conduct clinical and preclinical studies to further confirm these results. The project also includes activities to prepare a continuation towards a commercial product. The project will run from September 2016 to July 2017, with a total budget of about 1 million nkr.