Monitoring cerebral autoregulation in adults undergoing extracorporeal membrane oxygenation using diffuse correlation spectroscopy

Effects of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) treatment is a life saving treatment for patients that undergo cardiac or pulmonary arrest and is increasingly being used in adults. However, some adults develop brain injuries during treatment. Current neuroimaging techniques such as CT and MRI are inaccessible for these patients due to the high risk in moving them. In this study, we use diffuse correlation spectroscopy to non-invasively monitor cerebral blood flow in patients at the bedside during ECMO treatment. Using this data alongside physiological data, indices of cerebral autoregulation are calculated to observe how ECMO affects neurological health.