Asynchronicity of Facial Blood Perfusion in Migraine

Abstract

Asymmetrical changes in blood perfusion and asynchronous blood supply to head tissues likely contribute to migraine pathophysiology. Imaging was widely used in order to understand hemodynamic variations in migraine. However, mapping of blood pulsations in the face of migraineurs has not been performed so far. We used the Blood Pulsation Imaging (BPI) technique, which was recently developed in our group, to establish whether 2D-imaging of blood pulsations parameters can reveal new biomarkers of migraine. BPI characteristics were measured in migraineurs during the attack-free interval and compared to healthy subjects with and without a family history of migraine. We found a novel phenomenon of transverse waves of facial blood perfusion in migraineurs in contrast to healthy subjects who showed synchronous blood delivery to both sides of the face. Moreover, the amplitude of blood pulsations was symmetrically distributed over the face of healthy subjects, but asymmetrically in migraineurs and subjects with a family history of migraine. In the migraine patients we found a remarkable correlation between the side of unilateral headache and the direction of the blood perfusion wave. Our data suggest that migraine is associated with lateralization of blood perfusion and asynchronous blood pulsations in the facial area, which could be due to essential dysfunction of the autonomic vascular control in the face. These findings may further enhance our understanding of migraine pathophysiology and suggest new easily available biomarkers of this pathology.

Skin inhomogeneity as a source of error in remote PPG-imaging

“…However, exploring the potential of this developing technique requires a better understanding of the spatially varying phase and pulsating strength that is inherent to mapping PPG signals using the complex inner-product. As a matter of fact, amplitude and phase maps are obtained, but the current published evidence remains insufficient to support the clinical value that these maps may have [5,6].…”

Ambiguity of mapping the relative phase of blood pulsations

“…We proposed recently a PPG imaging of high spatial resolution, called Blood Pulsation Imaging (BPI), which exploits illuminations at the single wavelength [11]. Data processing of digital images in BPI is based on the detection of time-varying modulation of each pixel in the recorded video frames synchronously with the heartbeats [11][12][13][14]. The most important feature of this approach is that, apart from traditional measurement of amplitudes, BPI allows to visualize the distribution of the relative phase of the blood pulsations.…”

\Accurate measurement of the pulse wave delay with imaging photoplethysmography

“…Our previous studies suggested that migraine was associated with impaired vascular reactivity [37], and characterized by asynchronicity of blood pulsations in the face [18]. PTT estimation with the proposed technique could allow detection of further details of vasomotor reactivity associated with migraine, and even serve a new approach for evaluation efficiency of anti-migraine medicines.…”

“…The optical part of the system was similar to that described in our previous work [18]. The IPPG system consisted of a digital black-and-white CMOS camera (8-bit model GigE uEye UI-5220SE of the Imaging Development Systems GmbH) and a lightemitting diode (LED) source for subject's face illumination.…”

“…This method became very popular among researchers because of its ease of use and potentially low cost. One main advantage of IPPG is that it could be applied in different parts of the body including easily accessible ones such as the human face [17][18][19][20]. Similar to the PPG waveform, IPPG signals follows the changes of the arterial blood pressure [21], but in contrast to the contact PPG sensors these changes are measured simultaneously in many physically different areas of the body.…”