Research Seminar: “NIRS and DCS: A Novel Bedside Tool for Assessing Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism in Infants”

Speaker: Pei-Yi (Ivy) Lin, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School 

Talk Summary: Cerebral blood flow and oxygen metabolism are promising biomarkers of brain health and development that were previously difficult to measure. Dr. Lin and her lab developed novel frequency-domain near-infrared spectroscopy (FDNIRS) with diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) methods for rapid, non-invasive measurement of indexes cerebral of microvascular blood flow (CBFi) and oxygen metabolism (CMRO2i) at the bedside. They show these are more sensitive pathophysiologic measures than conventional cerebral oxygen saturation. Dr. Lin will briefly review the NIRS-DCS technologies they developed at Boston Children’s Hospital and show how they have used them to investigate common neonatal diseases in the NICU and post-infectious hydrocephalus in Uganda, Africa. 

Hosted by Tai-Wei Wu, MD from the Division of Neonatology, Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, USC Keck School of Medicine, Attending Neonatologist, Center for Fetal and Neonatal Medicine, Director of Neonatal Neurocritical Care, Newborn & Infant Critical Care Unit, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

RSVP to tecpad@chla.usc.edu . For questions, please email Sandy Wang at sawang@chla.usc.edu