Detection & Monitoring of Circulatory Shock Using Diffuse Correlation & Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

Thursday, February 5, 2026

11:00 AM-1:00 PM

BIOMED PhD Research Proposal

Title: 
Detection and Monitoring of Circulatory Shock Using Diffuse Correlation and Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

Speaker:
Randolph Sinahon, PhD Candidate
School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems
Drexel University

Advisors:
Kurtulus Izzetoglu, PhD
Associate Professor
School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems
Drexel University

Shadi Malaeb, MD
Associate Professor
Department of Pediatrics 
College of Medicine
St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children
Drexel University 

Details:
Circulatory shock is a leading global cause of death and disability in children. Shock is defined as a life-threatening condition where cardiovascular system failure causes inadequate delivery of oxygen and metabolic substrates, to meet the demands of various tissues and organs in the body, especially vital organs such as the heart and the brain. If these significant energy deficits persist, irreversible cell death and tissue damage can occur, leading to multisystem organ failure and death. Newborn infants are at high risk of brain injury from various circulatory insults, including birth asphyxia leading to hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy. In older children >5 years old, the majority causes of death shift towards drowning, and hemorrhagic shock related to unintentional or traumatic injuries. 

While standard hemodynamic measures, such as heart rate and blood pressure, provide immediate and critical information about a patient’s condition, vital signs alone are considered poor indicators of shock, as robust compensatory mechanisms may mask potential early warning signs of circulatory collapse. Furthermore, regardless of whether vital signs or other systemic hemodynamic measures can be corrected, these measures do not directly reflect local tissue health of vital organs, especially the brain, as regional perfusion may still be insufficient or impaired. 

Cerebral microvasculature maintains cerebral tissue homeostasis through balanced exchange of oxygen, nutrients, and waste products. Thus, perturbations in cerebral microvascular hemodynamics may provide early warning signs of impending shock. Hence, in this work, we propose the use of two optical neuromonitoring techniques, Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy (DCS) and Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS), to provide non-invasive, continuous measurements of regional microvascular cerebral blood flow and local tissue oxygenation for detection and monitoring progression of circulatory shock.

The primary objective of my thesis is to evaluate and enhance the clinical utility of DCS-NIRS derived biomarkers to non-invasively quantify cerebral hemodynamic changes during hemodynamic instability, shock, and circulatory collapse, using two newborn piglet models of controlled hemorrhagic and hypoxic insults. The goal of this thesis is to develop new algorithms and methods for extracting and testing novel biomarkers from DCS and NIRS measurements. These new biomarkers and indices will help to advance DCS-NIRS systems as potential clinical tools for monitoring the cerebral hemodynamic signatures of shock and impending circulatory collapse.