Human space exploration exposes astronauts to numerous health and performance risks. These risks are both physiological and psychological in nature and necessitate medical assessments of muscle, bone, cardiovasculature, brain, and other systems. Our group is developing flexible, wearable, multimodality technologies for measuring, monitoring, and imaging regional tissue oxygenation, perfusion and hemodynamics, biopotentials (ECG, EEG), motion, and other parameters to complement current systems for spaceflight medical assessment (ultrasound). Our technologies have been successfully applied to several spaceflight-related studies, including brain hemodynamics monitoring during parabolic flight, sleep physiology studies in the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) facility, and development of countermeasures for spaceflight associated neuro-ocular syndrome (SANS).
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