The Development of Novel Noninvasive Internal Jugular Venous Oximetry

Central venous oxygen (ScvO2) is an important index for evaluating tissue perfusion in clinical care. To obtain the ScvO2 value, blood analysis must be obtained through a central venous catheter (CVC). Although CVC placement has a low incidence of complications, however, detrimental complications such as pneumothorax, hemothorax, infection and arrhythmia, are often fatal. In addition, continuous monitoring of ScvO2 often requires expensive equipment, so usually clinical caregivers can only take blood tests at specific care intervals, and may miss the opportunity to detect disease deterioration. In terms of anatomical structure and physiology, the values of internal jugular blood oxygen (SijvO2) and ScvO2 should be very close, and the evidence in the literature also points out that SijvO2 is not only highly similar to ScvO2, but also related to changes in cerebral blood oxygen. The internal jugular vein location is also an easier location for non-invasive continuous monitoring and thus it is interested to develop the novel technique for noninvasive continuous SijvO2 monitoring.

In this study, we are developing a novel plethysmographic monitoring device which incorporates several key techniques: inclusion of structural information (ultrasound image), coupling with the estimation of local tissue optical parameters, consideration of the tissue scattering absorption coefficient of each subject, to finally calculate the noninvasive continuous internal jugular venous saturation.