Newly Discovered View of Brain Blood Flow During Surgery Could Prevent Debilitation, Save Lives

It’s one thing to develop a breakthrough technique for medicine, quite another to develop something that is ready to implement into clinic with minimal adjustment to equipment that already exists. 

But that’s exactly what professor Andrew Dunn did with the help of postdocs and other researchers across the Cockrell School Department of Biomedical Engineering. This year Dunn was awarded two R01 grants from the National Institutes of Health to assist in further collaborations and research into blood flow imaging and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Dunn built on existing techniques of measuring bloodflow to the brain during neurosurgery (crucial for decision-making and health of the patient) to build a camera system that can integrate current understanding of blood flow dynamics and offer more granular information to clinicians and doctors. This could mean the difference between an educated guess by surgeons and a confident decision that leads to a full recovery.