Reliability of diffuse optical spectroscopies for evaluation of cerebral hemometabolic stress in children with sickle cell anemia

Diffuse optical spectroscopies are promising non-invasive optical techniques that may provide a point-of-care tool to evaluate cerebral hemometabolic stress. This study quantifies the intra- and inter-operator reliability of a battery of cerebral hemometabolic parameters quantified with diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) and frequency-domain near-infrared spectroscopy (FDNIRS) in children with sickle cell anemia. For measures of cerebral blood flow, oxygen extraction fraction, metabolic rate of oxygen, and cerebral blood volume, we found inter-operator concordance correlation coefficients (CCC) ranging from 0.45 to 0.97, intra-operator CCCs ranging from 0.81 to 0.98, and a median coefficient of variation < 16%.