Study of the Neuro-electrostimulation Influence on the Head Skin

Capillary Blood Flow

Vladimir Kublanov, Mikhail Babich, Anton Dolganov, Evgenii Shleymovich,

Boris Zhilkin and Evgenii Plesniaev

Ural Federal University, 620002, Mira 19, Yekaterinburg, Russian Federation

Keywords: Neuro-Electrostimulation, ‘SYMPATHOCOR-01’, Blood Perfusion, Pennes Equation, Thermal Imaging.

Abstract: The pilot study of the ‘SYMPATHOCOR-01’ neuro-electrostimulation device influence on the head skin

capillary blood flow is described. The infrared thermographic camera was used for the head skin capillary

blood flow registration. The analysis of the registered thermograms was performed for mean head skin

temperature evaluation. The experiment has shown that application of the neuro-electrostimulator in the

blocking mode of the sympathetic nervous system caused the decrease of the head surface temperature. The

temperature decrease is associated with the perfusion rate increase on the capillary level, which is in

agreement with the neuro-electrostimulation application techniques.

1 INTRODUCTION

Many technologies of the physical fields application

are aimed to improve performance of the circulatory

system (Mesquita et al. 2013, Morishita et al. 2014,

Yamabata et al. 2016, Jin et al. 2017). The most

promising among them control the autonomic

nervous system (ANS) to provide constrictive

management of the blood vessels tone.

The ‘SYMPATHOCOR-01’ neuro-electrostimu-

lation device is capable of performing such control.

The medical techniques of the ‘SYMPATHOCOR-

01’ device application implement the methodology of

dynamic correction of the sympathetic nervous

system correction (DCASNS) and provide correction

of the autonomic balance, defined by the relation of

the sympathetic and parasympathetic departments of

the ANS (Kublanov, Shmirev, et al. 2010, Kublanov

et al. 2017).

The design process of the ‘SYMPATHOCOR-01’

device medical application was accomponied by the

experimental studies on laboratory animals

(Kublanov, Danilova, et al. 2010, Kublanov et al.

2012) and the single-photon emission computed

tomography imaging. (Kublanov et al. 2004). In

clinical practice, the device has been successfully

applied for treatment of the vascular dystonia;

headaches of different origin, including migraine;

hypertension; neurosensory hearing loss; degenera-

tive sight deficits and atrophy of the visual nerve;

neurosis-like syndromes and neuropathies of the

various origins (Kublanov, Shmirev, et al. 2010).

However, in the previous works the changes in the

capillary blood flow were not studied. In most cases

the capillary blood flow define the skin’s temperature

fluctuations. The goal of the present work is to

conduct pilot study for investigation of the

‘SYMPATHOCOR-01’ device influence on the head

skin capillary blood flow by means of the infrared

thermography.

2 MATHERIALS AND METHODS

2.1 Experiment Description

The neuro-electrostimuation procedure was perfor-

med by the modern implementation of the

‘SYMPATHOCOR-01’ device. The key targets of the

‘SYMPATHOCOR-01’ devices are the neural

formations in the neck region. The device is included

in the register of medical equipment products of the

Russian Federation – registration certificate № FCR

2007/00757.

The modern device implementation consists of

two blocks. The first block is used for generation of

the spatially distributed rotating field of current

pulses and has two multi-element electrodes which

Kublanov V., Babich M., Dolganov A., Shleymovich E., Zhilkin B. and Plesniaev E.

Study of the Neuro-electrostimulation Inﬂuence on the Head Skin Capillary Blood Flow.

DOI: 10.5220/0006592803510355

are placed on the neck. The first block is supplied by

the built-in accumulator, has dimensions of 90 х 50 х

18.5 mm, and weighs less than 200 g. The second block

is used for management and control of the neuro-

electrostimulation procedure. At the moment, the

second block is realized as the application for the

Android operation system. Bluetooth low energy

channel exchange information between the two blocks.

The pilot study was conducted in the Research

Medical and Biological Engineering Centre of High

Technologies, Ural Federal University. The

experimental program of the study had an approval

№8 from 16 October 2015 of local ethics committee

in Ural State Medical University. The one relatively

healthy volunteer – male, 27 years old, doesn’t have

any health complains – has participated in single

experiment. Prior to the study volunteer has signed

the participation consent. The whole experiment was

supervised by the physician. The experiment layout is

shown on Fig. 1.

During the whole study the volunteer was sitting

on the chair. The infrared thermographic camera NEC

Thermo Tracer TH9100WL was used for registration

of the skin surface temperature. The infrared

thermographic camera was placed on the tripod at the

distance of 1.0 meter from the volunteer’s head. The

thermogram frame center was projected on the

volunteer’s forehead. In the bottom the thermogram

was limited by the nose, to prevent the breathing

artifacts. Example of the registered thermogram

frame is shown on Fig. 2.

The camera’s output was connected to the note-

book, which controlled the thermograms registration

and storage. The resolution of the registered

thermograms was 320 x 240 pixels; 3 frames per

second. The thermal resolution was 0.1°С.

Figure 1: Experiment layout.

Figure 2: Thermogram frame example.

The neuro-electrostimulation device was used in

the blocking mode of the Sympathetic Nervous

System (SNS). For that, the following values of the

biotropic field features were set: the partial impulse

length – 30 us, modulation frequency – 50 Hz. The

amplitude value set in a way, that volunteers had a

subjective vibration feeling in the ear lobe.

2.2 Study Timeline

The pilot study consisted of 5 stages, each lasting 5

minutes:

 1st stage – the baseline record (without neuro-

electrostimulation);

 2nd stage – stimulation of the left neck

ganglion of the SNS;

 3rd stage – rest (without neuro-

electrostimulation);

 4th stage – stimulation of the right neck

ganglion of the SNS;

 5th stage – aftereffect (without neuro-

electrostimulation).

The thermogram frames were registered during

the whole study. The whole study data was stored as

4500 *.csv files, each containing information about

single thermogram frame.

2.3 Thermogram Frame Processing

The block-diagram of the thermogram processing is

presented on Fig. 3.

The processing algorithm is a cycle; each cycle

iteration process single thermogram frame. At the

first step, the next thermogram frame is selected. On

the second step, the threshold temperature value

threshold

) is evaluated. For the T

threshold

evaluation the

histogram distribution of the thermogram frame is

analyzed. The histogram of the thermogram frame,

shown on Fig. 2, is presented on Fig. 4.

Figure 4: Thermogram frame histogram.

Figure 3: Thermogram processing block-diagram.

Histogram, presented on Fig. 4, has a polymodal

distribution. Each thermogram frame consists of three

normal distributions, they are B – background tempe-

rature, H – hair temperature and S – skin temperature.

The expectation maximization algorithm is used to

evaluate the probability densities of each distribution

(Moon 1996). The equality temperature of probability

densities for distributions B and H was used as the

threshold

On the third step of the iteration the mask M is

constructed using the T

threshold

value. For each

horizontal (x) and vertical (y) indexes of the original

thermogram each element of M is defined as

followed:



,

=

1, 

,





0,

(1)

The mask allows separating image of the head

from the background. The mask, constructed for the

thermogram frame, shown on Fig. 2, is presented on

Fig. 5.

Figure 5: Thermogram frame mask.

On the fourth step of the iteration, the mean

temperature value of the head is evaluated in

accordance with the following formula:





∑



,

∘

,,

∑



,,

(2)

On the fifth iteration step the T

mean

value is saved

to the output array.

The algorithm was written on Python 3.6.0 with

Anaconda 4.3.1 distribution. As the result of the

algorithm running, the plot of the mean temperatures

for all thermogram frames was created.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The human body thermoregulation is organized by

the variety of the physical process that includes

Figure 6: Mean temperature plot for whole study timeline.

metabolic heat generation, change of the thermal

insulation features of the tissues and sweating. One of

the metabolic heat production components is the non-

contracting thermogenesis. The short-term control of

the non-contracting thermogenesis is done through

the ANS. The suppression of the nervous system

activity leads to the decrease of the non-contracting

thermogenesis. The temperature regulation effects,

which are associated with the blood supply, vary for

different functional areas. For the human head there

are two types of the functional areas: acral areas,

which includes hears, lips and nose. The second type

includes the remaining skin surface of the head

(Hensel et al. 1973).

The blood suply of the acral areas is controlled by

the noradrenalin sympathetic nerves. Increase of the

sympathetic tone causes shrinking of the vasculars.

Shrinked vasculars significantly deacrease

convention.

The sweating process is only regulated through

the holinergetic sympathetic fabrics. The blocking of

the holinergetic synapsis results in the sweating

decrease, which, in turn, increase body temperature.

The heat distribution in living organism tissues is

described by the Pennes bio-heat equation (Bergman

and Incropera 2011):







=∇



∇T



+













−



+



(3)

where: ρ – density of the biological tissue, c – heat

capacity of the biological tissue, k – thermal

conduction of the biological tissue. ω

–mass blood

flow per unit volume of the biological tissue,

– blood heat capacity, q

– metabolic heat per unit

volume of the biological tissue, T

– arterial blood

temperature, T – biological tissue temperature,

∂T/∂t – temperature variation rate.

According to the Pennes equation the temperature

of the biological tissue is defined by three

components: heat exchange with the surrounding

biological tissues {∇(k∇T)}, heat exchange with the

blood {ω

–T)}, metabolic heat of the tissue - q

Mean temperatures plot for all thermogram

frames, with annotated experiment stages is shown on

figure 6. The plot shows, that mean temperature of the

head surface decreases during the 2nd and 4th stages

– neuro-electrostimulation stages. The difference

between the time-averaged temperature of the first

and second stage was 0.44 °С. The difference

between the time-averaged temperature of the first

and the fourth stage was 0.53 °С.

The measuring accuracy of the thermal imager

was ±2% or 2°С, but the thermal resolution was

0.04°С (Gerlach 2006). Therefore, changes on the

0.44°С and 0.53°С are not associated with the noise

of thermal imager. These changes reflect metabolic

reaction of the subject.

The neuro-electrostimulation device was working

in the blocking mode of SNS activity. Therefore,

stimulation decreases the vascular tone and, as the

results improves perfusion rate in tissues. In

accordance with the Pennes equation, in particular the

second component {ω

–T)}, the skin surface

should decrease, on the other hand, the blocking of

the SNS activity leads to the non-contracting

thermogenesis (the q

component). Jointly, it results

in the general decrease of the head skin temperature.

When the stimulation process is stopped – stages

3 and 5 – blood perfusion and non-contracting

thermogenesis tends to return to the original values.

This results in the graduate increase of the

temperature to the baseline values.

One can note the different behavior of the thermal

changes in the stages 2 and 4. It can be associated with

the different organization of the left and right upper

ganglia.

4 CONCLUSIONS

Presented in the paper results show that neuro-

electrostimulation of the neck neural conducting path

allows one to regulate skin capillary blood flow of the

head and, as the result, to change skin temperature. If

the blocking mode of the sympathetic nervous system

is selected than it is possible to decrease skin

temperature. It was hypothesized that this physical

phenomena is define by the changes of the blood

perfusion and decrease of the non-contracting

thermogenesis

The development of the described in this work

methodology can result in application of the

‘SYMPATHOCOR-01’ neuro-electrostimulation for

treatment of the skin defects, burns and in cosmetic

tasks by means of the blood flow control.

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