Brain Assessment Devices Identify Traumatic Brain Injuries

Mobile, hand-held, wireless brain function assessment tools under development are intended to provide a determination of whether brain trauma has occurred, and could potentially be used to identify troops sustaining traumatic brain injury (TBI).

The new generation of technology in development will operate as a digital translator of electrical activity in the brain through digital signal processing (DSP), allowing medical professionals to quickly obtain adjunct clinical information based on a quantitative assessment of a patient's need for further diagnostic evaluation and appropriate treatment. The rapid automated analysis of abnormalities in brain function will enable on-site detection of TBI, in an ambulance, emergency department, the sports field, or on the battlefield. Traditional constraints to first-on-scene assessments of brain function are to be overcome through the use of disposable compact frontal electrode headsets for data collection, miniaturized hardware, and advanced nonlinear computer algorithms that perform quantitative analysis of brain electrical activity and calculate the probability that a particular diagnostic profile exists, such as TBI.

The device displays a simple meter, which shows whether brain activity after an injury falls in or out of the danger zone. The DSP technology picks up brain signals, while simultaneously canceling out electrical noise from blinking, breathing, and other physiological functions. The device then calculates the severity of each injury by comparing brain wave readings to a database of 15,000 scans compiled at the New York University (NYU, NY, USA) Brain Research Lab. The new devices are being developed by BrainScope (Chesterfield, MI, USA), which is pending U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for its first product, the ZOOM, an advanced 8-channel brain electrical activity data collection system with post-hoc statistical analysis. The company is continuing research of TBI is in eight emergency departments (EDs) across the United States.

"We are very excited about the potential of this new technology which may be able to show a functional degree of abnormality in the brain based on the electrical activity. The idea that we might be able to use this, real time, to evaluate changes in patients seen in the ED will be a useful adjunct to current clinical practices which will change the way we evaluate patients with concussions," said Rosanne Naunheim, M.D., an associate professor of emergency medicine at Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis, MI, USA), one of the centers participating in the study.

BrainScope employs an older and somewhat controversial technology called quantitative electroencephalogram (qEEG). Originally developed in the 1930s, qEEG later grew popular among New Age clinics, and some still say it can be used to diagnose and treat learning disabilities and depression.

Related Links:
New York University
BrainScope
Washington University School of Medicine