Unmet NeedCortical stimulation mapping is an electrocorticography monitoring that involves a surgically invasive clinical procedure. Its purpose serves to localize functions of specific cerebral regions of the brain through electrical stimulation of a cerebral cortex. During cortical stimulation mapping, electrodes are placed directly on to the cerebral cortex of a subject and electrical stimulations may be applied to monitor for electrical responses or after-discharges. The after-discharge can reveal abnormal or unstable cerebral regions, known as epileptogenic zones, which are prone to spontaneous seizures. Although clinicians prefer to thoroughly test additional regions,
in vivo cortical stimulation mapping procedures can lead to additional invasive surgical procedures which can be potentially harmful to the subject. There is a need in the field for a non-invasive accurate localization platform to accurately map epileptogenic zones in cerebral regions.
Technology OverviewThe inventors have demonstrated a localization platform that may assist clinicians in mapping cerebral regions and localizing epileptogenic zones with fewer constraints. The platform involves obtaining data through a non-invasive procedure which can then be used to apply virtual-impulses to virtual-inputs of a subjects’ cerebral region. The virtual after-discharge from virtual outputs of the cortical stimulation mapping model generates an index of the cerebral region. In some implementations, the localization platform may generate the index in the form of a heat map that identifies unstable cerebral regions based on the virtual after-discharges, identify an epileptogenic zone based on the index, and/or provide other information to a clinician. In this way, the localization platform may enable clinicians to more thoroughly perform cortical stimulation mapping and more accurately identify an epileptogenic zone without
additional costs, time, resources, and risks associated with in-vivo cortical stimulation mapping procedures.
Stage of DevelopmentThe inventors have shown through rigorous computational methods a platform that allows the use of non-invasive cerebral monitoring data to generate a cortical stimulation mapping model of the plurality of cerebral regions of a subject. This improves upon existing technology by implementing an interpretable tool that is reflective of what neurosurgeons do already in the clinic in-vivo. There is currently no computational tool used in the clinic to localize the epileptogenic zone.
