Abstract Background To investigate the feasibility of intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring after traumatic brain injury (TBI) by electromagnetic coupling phase sensing, we established a portable electromagnetic coupling phase shift (ECPS) test system and conducted a comparison with invasive ICP. Methods TBI rabbits’ model were all synchronously monitored for 24 h by ECPS testing and invasive ICP. We investigated the abilities of the ECPS to detect targeted ICP by feature extraction and traditional classification decision algorithms. Results The ECPS showed an overall downward trend with a variation range of − 13.370 ± 2.245° as ICP rose from 11.450 ± 0.510 mmHg to 38.750 ± 4.064 mmHg, but its change rate gradually declined. It was greater than 1.5°/h during the first 6 h, then decreased to 0.5°/h and finally reached the minimum of 0.14°/h. Nonlinear regression analysis results illustrated that both the ECPS and its change rate decrease with increasing ICP post-TBI. When used as a recognition feature, the ability (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, AUCs) of the ECPS to detect ICP ≥ 20 mmHg was 0.88 ± 0.01 based on the optimized adaptive boosting model, reaching the advanced level of current noninvasive ICP assessment methods. Conclusions The ECPS has the potential to be used for noninvasive continuous monitoring of elevated ICP post-TBI.
