Unmet Need
Neuromodulation is an alteration of nervous system activity caused by the deliberate delivery of an electrical or pharmaceutical agent to a target area. It has a plethora of applications including deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease and responsive neurostimulation for seizure disorders. It is also becoming increasingly common to use electrophysiological features as biofeedback in neuromodulation procedures in order to adjust the characteristics of the applied therapy. These closed-loop systems must record and stimulate simultaneously during neural activity, a challenging task due to the presence of persistent stimulation artifacts that distort the recorded signals. Thus, there is a need for a method of reducing the artifact in signals acquired during neuromodulation therapies in order to increase the effectiveness of neuromodulation systems.
Technology Overview
Johns Hopkins researchers have developed an adaptive artifact removal system for removing brain stimulation artifacts from the recording sites of target brain structures. The method allows for simultaneous stimulation and recording while removing transient stimulation artifacts to provide an accurate electrophysiological signal detection during stimulation. This method can be fully implemented on a system-on-chip (SoC) technology and added to existing neuromodulation systems, for online stimulus artifact removal or as a software package for offline stimulus artifact removal. Currently, the inventors have fully designed and implemented this method in their electrophysiology devices and are working on a dedicated processor application. This invention has the potential to increase the accuracy of electrophysiological signals acquired in various neuromodulation procedures, thus significantly improving the effectiveness of closed-loop neuromodulation systems.
Stage of Development
Prototype - the method is fully designed and implemented in electrophysiology devices in a software package format and a dedicated processor application in a SoC platform is being developed.
