An experimental study on the early diagnosis of traumatic brain injury in rabbits based on a noncontact and portable system

Jun Yang; Hui Zhao; Gen Li; Qisheng Ran; Jingbo Chen; Zelin Bai; Gui Jin; Jian Sun; Jia Xu; Mingxin Qin; Mingsheng Chen

doi:10.7717/peerj.6717

An experimental study on the early diagnosis of traumatic brain injury in rabbits based on a noncontact and portable system

PeerJ. 2019 Apr 12:7:e6717. doi: 10.7717/peerj.6717. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Jun Yang^#¹, Hui Zhao^#², Gen Li³, Qisheng Ran⁴, Jingbo Chen¹, Zelin Bai¹, Gui Jin¹, Jian Sun¹, Jia Xu¹, Mingxin Qin¹, Mingsheng Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Biomedical Engineering, Army Medical University, Chongqing, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Trauma, Burns and Combined Injury, Institute of Surgery Research, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China.
³ Department of Biomedical Engineering, Chongqing University of Technology, Chongqing, China.
⁴ Department of Radiology, Army Medical Center, Chongqing, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Closed cerebral hemorrhage (CCH) is a common symptom in traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients who suffer intracranial hemorrhage with the dura mater remaining intact. The diagnosis of CCH patients prior to hospitalization and in the early stage of the disease can help patients get earlier treatments that improve outcomes. In this study, a noncontact, portable system for early TBI-induced CCH detection was constructed that measures the magnetic induction phase shift (MIPS), which is associated with the mean brain conductivity caused by the ratio between the liquid (blood/CSF and the intracranial tissues) change. To evaluate the performance of this system, a rabbit CCH model with two severity levels was established based on the horizontal biological impactor BIM-II, whose feasibility was verified by computed tomography images of three sections and three serial slices. There were two groups involved in the experiments (group 1 with 10 TBI rabbits were simulated by hammer hit with air pressure of 600 kPa by BIM-II and group 2 with 10 TBI rabbits were simulated with 650 kPa). The MIPS values of the two groups were obtained within 30 min before and after injury. In group 1, the MIPS values showed a constant downward trend with a minimum value of -11.17 ± 2.91° at the 30th min after 600 kPa impact by BIM-II. After the 650 kPa impact, the MIPS values in group 2 showed a constant downward trend until the 25th min, with a minimum value of -16.81 ± 2.10°. Unlike group 1, the MIPS values showed an upward trend after that point. Before the injury, the MIPS values in both group 1 and group 2 did not obviously change within the 30 min measurement. Using a support vector machine at the same time point after injury, the classification accuracy of the two types of severity was shown to be beyond 90%. Combined with CCH pathological mechanisms, this system can not only achieve the detection of early functional changes in CCH but can also distinguish different severities of CCH.

Keywords: Closed cerebral hemorrhage; Magnetic induction phase shift; Noncontact; Prehospital diagnosis; Traumatic brain injury.

Grants and funding

This work were supported by the Foundation of the Third Military Medical University (2014XZH03) and the National Nature Science Foundation of China (61801483). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.