Smart catheter flow sensor for real-time continuous regional cerebral blood flow monitoring

We present a smart catheter flow sensor for real-time, continuous, and quantitative measurement of regional cerebral blood flow using in situ temperature and thermal conductivity compensation. The flow sensor operates in a constant-temperature mode and employs a periodic heating and cooling technique. This approach ensures zero drift and provides highly reliable data with microelectromechanical system-based thin film sensors. The developed flow sensor has a sensitivity of 0.973 mV/ml/100 g/min in the range from 0 to 160 ml/100 g/min with a linear correlation coefficient of R-2 = 0.9953. It achieves a resolution of 0.25 ml/100 g/min and an accuracy better than 5 ml/100 g/min. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3669705]