Dementia disorders are increasingly becoming sources of a broad range of
problems, strongly interfering with normal daily tasks of a growing number of
individuals. Such neurodegenerative diseases are often accompanied with
progressive brain atrophy that, at late stages, leads to drastically reduced
brain dimensions. At the moment, this structural involution can be followed
with XCT or MRI measurements that share numerous disadvantages in terms of
usability, invasiveness and costs. In this work, we aim to retrieve information
concerning the brain atrophy stage and its evolution, proposing a novel
approach based on non-invasive time-resolved Near Infra-Red (tr-NIR)
measurements. For this purpose, we created a set of human-head atlases, in
which we eroded the brain as it would happen in a clinical brain-atrophy
progression. With these realistic meshes, we reproduced a longitudinal tr-NIR
study exploiting a Monte-Carlo photon propagation algorithm to model the
varying cerebral spinal fluid (CSF). The study of the time-resolved reflectance
curve at late photon arrival times exhibited peculiar slope-changes upon CSF
layer increase that were confirmed under several measurement conditions. The
performance of the technique suggests good sensitivity to CSF variation, useful
for a fast and non-invasive observation of the dementia progression.Comment: 32 pages, double spaced, 11 figure
