The effect of body position change on noninvasively acquired intracranial pulse waves

Abstract

Objective. Craniospinal compliance (CC) is an important metric for the characterization of space-occupying neurological pathologies. CC is obtained using invasive procedures that carry risks for the patients. Therefore, noninvasive methods for acquiring surrogates of CC have been proposed, most recently based on changes in the head’s dielectric properties during the cardiac cycle. Here, we have tested whether changes in body position, which are known to influence CC, are reflected in a capacitively acquired signal (hereinafter referred to as W) originating from dynamic changes of the head’s dielectric properties. Approach. eighteen young healthy volunteers were included in the study. After 10 min in supine position, subjects were tilted head-up (HUT), back to 0° (horizontal, control), and then head-down (HDT). Metrics related to cardiovascular action were extracted from W, including AMP, the peak-to-valley amplitude of the cardiac modulation of W. Computational electromagnetic simulations were performed to probe the association between intracranial volume change and W. Main results. AMP decreased during HUT (0°: 2869 ± 597 arbitrary units (au); +75°: 2307 ± 490 au, P = 0.002) and increased during HDT (−30°: 4403 ± 1428 au, P < 0.0001). The same behavior was predicted by the electromagnetic model. Significance. tilting affects the distribution of CC between cranial and spinal compartments. Cardiovascular action induces compliance-dependent oscillatory changes in the intracranial fluid composition, which causes corresponding variations in the head’s dielectric properties. These manifest as increasing AMP with decreasing intracranial compliance, which suggests that W may contain information related to CC, and that it might be possible to derive CC surrogates therefrom.