Monitoring Brain Blood Flow with a Wearable Ultrasound Patch

University of California San Diego engineers have developed a wearable ultrasound patch that can offer continuous, non-invasive monitoring of blood flow in the brain. Watch this video to learn more about this soft and stretchy patch that can be comfortably worn on the temple.

“The continuous monitoring capability of the patch addresses a critical gap in current clinical practices,” said study co-first author Sai Zhou,  a materials science and engineering Ph.D. candidate in Xu’s lab. “Typically, cerebral blood flow is monitored at specific times each day, and those measurements do not necessarily reflect what may happen during the rest of the day. There can be undetected fluctuations between measurements. If a patient is about to experience an onset of stroke in the middle of the night, this device could offer information that is crucial for timely intervention.”

Transcript

00:00:00 this is a wearable ultrasound patch that can continuously monitor blood flow within the brain this new device tested here on a UC San Diego researcher is meant to be an alternative to today's clinical standard that requires trained technicians to very carefully hold ultrasound probes against their patients heads this new patch on the other hand can be used for continuous or long-term

00:00:24 monitoring and its accuracy is not dependent on operator skill this researcher from UC San Diego's Jacob School of Engineering is manufacturing a flexible sensor which will capture all this data this device consists of layers of five laser etched copper electrodes transducers all of this carefully sandwiched in silicone so the assembly

00:00:49 stays flexible and can conform to people's head shapes with this novel wearable sensor scientists have also been able to record 3D information about the brain's Network of blood vessels in the future this sensor could use a small Electronic Module to wirelessly transmit its data to a computer or even a phone