Intraoperative imaging of cortical cerebral perfusion by time-resolved thermography and multivariate data analysis.

A new approach to cortical perfusion imaging is demonstrated using high-sensitivity thermography in conjunction with multivariate statistical data analysis. Local temperature changes caused by a cold bolus are imaged and transferred to a false color image. A cold bolus of 10 ml saline at ice temperature is injected systemically via a central venous access. During the injection, a sequence of 735 thermographic images are recorded within 2 min. The recorded data cube is subjected to a principal component analysis (PCA) to select slight changes of the cortical temperature caused by the cold bolus. PCA reveals that 11 s after injection the temperature of blood vessels is shortly decreased followed by an increase to the temperature before the cold bolus is injected. We demonstrate the potential of intraoperative thermography in combination with multivariate data analysis to image cortical cerebral perfusion without any markers. We provide the first in vivo application of multivariate thermographic imaging.