Mutual Information and Assesment of Dynamic Cerebral Autoregulation

The assessment of dynamic cerebral autoregulation (DCA) and cerebral hemodynamics is a central task in patients suffering from cerebrovascular diseases or from stroke. We present an investigation of the DCA assessment on the basis of mutual information (MI) analysis in patients suffering from severe unilateral carotid stenosis and a control group of healthy volunteers. Besides the evaluation of the MI approach a comparison with various other approaches and validated DCA parameters is presented. We find significant differences between the healthy volunteers and the patients suffering from stenosis in the new approaches and the validated DCA parameters. Moreover side-to-side differences ipsi- and contralateral to the stenosis are found. Finally, the concordance of the various approaches for DCA assessment is discussed.