Development and application of new technologies for non-invasive imaging of cerebral blood flow

Precision Medicine Project - Development and application of new technologies for non-invasive imaging of cerebral blood flow

Supervisor(s): Prof Matthew Nolan & Prof Robert Henderson
Centre/Institute: Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences, Institute for Neuroscience and Cardiovascual Research

Background

New technologies for imaging cerebral blood flow will be crucial for diagnosing and monitoring neurological disorders, such as stroke, dementia, and migraines, and for enhancing our understanding of brain health. For example, accurate blood flow imaging could inform tailored treatment plans, facilitate earlier detection of abnormalities, allowing for prompt interventions, and support personalized medicine by providing detailed insights into individual brain physiology. New imaging methods will also open new research opportunities by allowing exploration of brain dynamics and the effects of interventions on cerebral blood flow.

An ideal technology for monitoring cerebral blood flow would enable pulsatile movement of blood through vessels to be monitored by imaging at time scales faster than the heart-rate. However, standard technologies for non-invasively imaging cerebral blood either monitor the cerebral pulse, or generate images of average blood flow across a brain area during relatively long time windows.

Diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) is a promising non-invasive approach for monitoring cerebral blood flow (Carp et al. 2023). However, it's applications to date are constrained by the available optical sensors. Sensors that we recently developed improve the sensitivity and speed for detection of speckle autocorrelations that reflect blood flow (Gorman et al. 2024). With these sensors it is now be possible to image blood flow across regions of cerebral cortex, opening up many potential clinical and research applications. However, achieving these goals will also require new data processing tools to efficiently read out blood flow images, and analysis tools to enable assessment of blood flow changes across physiological and pathological states.

Aims

  1. Development of ML/AI tools to extract physiologically and pathologically important blood flow measures from DCS imaging data.
  2. Experimentally validate blood flow measures using animal models of neurological disorders.
  3. Inform further engineering development DCS sensors and initiate applications in humans.

Training outcomes

  • Expertise in application of machine learning (e.g. CNNs, autoencoders, gradient boosting) and complementary statistical methods (e.g. generalised mixed effects models, Bayesian models) for processing and analysis of DCS data.
  • Expertise in experimental methods for imaging blood flow from rodent models.
  • Familiarity with engineering processes for sensor development and with clinical requirements for application of sensor technology, with communication skills to interact across domains.

References

  1. Carp, Stefan A. and Robinson, Mitchell B. and Franceschini, Maria A. (2023). Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy: Current Status and Future Outlook, Neurophotonics: 10(1), 1-10.
  2. Gorman, Alistair and Finlayson, Neil and Erdogan, Ahmet T. and Fisher, Lars and Wang, Yining and Rocca, Francescopaolo Mattioli Della and Mai, Hanning and Sie, Edbert J. and Marsili, Francesco and Henderson, Robert K. (2024). ATLAS: A Large Array, on-Chip Compute SPAD Camera for Multispeckle Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy, Biomedical Optics Express: 15(11), 6499-6515.

Apply Now

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  • The deadline for 26/27 applications is Monday 12th January 2026
  • Applicants must apply to a specific project. Please ensure you include details of the project on the Recruitment Form below, which you must submit to the research proposal section of your EUCLID application.
  • Please ensure you upload as many of the requested documents as possible, including a CV, at the time of submitting your EUCLID application.  

Q&A Sessions

Supervisor(s) of each project will be holding a 30 minute Q&A session in the first two weeks of December. 

If you have any questions regarding this project, you are invited to attend the session on TBC via Microsoft Teams. Click here to join the session.

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