New Technology Helps Monitor Brain Aneurysm Treatment

An approach that is potentially less invasive and more accurate for monitoring brain aneurysms is also simple enough for patients to use at home for frequent monitoring.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC; Vancouver, Canada) developed the new wireless monitoring technique for cerebral aneurysms by using the implanted Guglielmi Detachable Coil (GDC) embolization coils themselves as radiofrequency (RF) resonant sensors that detect blood entry. As the blood flows into a coil-implanted aneurysm, the parasitic capacitance of the coil is modified due to the difference in permittivity between the blood and the tissues grown around the coil, resulting in a change in the coil's resonant frequency.

The resonances of platinum GDC-like coils embedded in aneurysm models were shown to generate average responses of 224-819 MHz/mL to saline injected into them in laboratory models. The preliminary demonstration indicates a possible first step toward realizing long-term, noninvasive, and cost-effective remote monitoring of cerebral aneurysms treated with GDC embolization. The study was published ahead of print on October 15, 2011, in Biosensors and Bioelectronics.

“This is a completely brand new approach to monitoring cerebral embolization and our tests in the lab have been quite successful,” said lead author Kenichi Takahata, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering. “As an early detection method, what we're proposing could be carried out by patients at home on a continual basis. We anticipate having a prototype within two to three years.”

Currently, the only way to check whether an embolization is still working is to expose patients to high-dose X-rays for a computerized tomography (CT) scan or angiography, an invasive procedure that involves using catheters to inject dyes needed to highlight brain arteries. Both methods preclude frequent patient checkups.

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