Finding a less invasive way to measure intracranial pressure (ICP) in patients who have suffered a traumatic injury will be one of the first orders of business for the $25 million partnership between Royal Philips and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), announced earlier this year. The project, announced earlier today, will be undertaken in partnership with the Boston Medical Center (BMC).

By combining Philips ultrasound technology with MIT physiological modeling, and pairing them up to treat BMC patients, the researchers hope to change the way severe head injuries are managed. “The intent is to take it from something which is invasive now in the ICU, and make it available to more patients,” Hans-Aloys Wichmann, head of Philips Research North America, told HCB News.

ICP is traditionally measured with an invasive procedure that involves surgical penetration of the patient’s skull or lumbar spine and the insertion of a catheter into the cerebrospinal fluid space or neural tissue. The procedure is associated with a high risk of infection and damage to critical brain structures.
Because of that, only patients with the most severe head injuries currently undergo the procedure. But if the less invasive approach comes into clinical practice, patients with unexplained headaches, mild and moderate traumatic brain injury, and coma patients may be able to have their ICP measured in an ambulance, or even on the sidelines of a football field, and receive better-informed care for their particular condition.

“If you lack the knowledge of whether the pressure is elevated, you don’t know which patients to treat,” said Wischmann.

The researchers will have access to real cases in BMC’s neuro-intensive care unit, and work with experts in the neurology field to test a core estimation algorithm that has been developed by MIT’s Neuromonitoring and Critical Care Informatics group using Philips technologies. Over the next two years, the three organizations will work together to research the fully noninvasive, calibration-free approach to measuring ICP.

“We are expecting it to have a very significant outcome because we're not overlooking patients that would need it [and it comes] without the side effects and drawbacks of the invasive procedure,” said Wischmann.

As part of its decision to relocate to its research headquarters to Massachusetts, Philips intends to work on more projects like this one in collaboration with local academic and health care partners.

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