Monthly Archives: July 2011

A first proof-of-principle of a Tinnitus detector circuit

Posted on 27/07/2011 by | 1 comment

Tinnitus is a condition in which a patient perceives an auditory phantom sound that can take the form of ringing, buzzing, roaring or hissing in the absence of an external sound. Approximately a billion of people suffer from tinnitus worldwide, while in 2% – 3% of the population, tinnitus significantly degrades quality of life of the patients and can lead to insomnia, anxiety and depression.

Currently, there are no proven treatments for tinnitus. However, recent research has shown that tinnitus patients can benefit from electrical brain stimulation. In addition, it has been shown that there is a link between tinnitus perception and a change in the energy levels of several electrocortigography (ECoG) / electroencephalography (EEG) frequency bands. For example, the energies of theta (4-8Hz) and low-gamma (30-50Hz) waves increase, while the energy of alpha (8-12Hz) waves decreases during active tinnitus perception. The same studies suggest that the intensity of the tinnitus perception correlates with the amount of the energy increased in the gamma band.

The real-time tinnitus detection method proposed by the BME group detects tinnitus by comparing ECoG/EEG signal energies from different locations in the brain according to a tinnitus "signature". First, the proposed strategy selects appropriate ECoG/EEG bands per channel by means of band-pass filters. Next, their extracted energies are compared to their counterparts from a different (healthy) location. Tinnitus is detected only if higher theta and gamma energies while lower alpha energy is found when compared to the signals from this healthy region. The applicability of the detector is verified by means of circuit simulations with real neural waveforms and is able to successfully detect tinnitus.

Are you interested in any progress related to the tinnitus detector circuit? Stay tuned.

Senad 

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Posted in Education, Electronics, General, Neurostimulation and Neuromodulation, Understanding the Brain

Small chip to overcome inflammation of joints

Posted on 18/07/2011 by | 1 comment

Today, the Telegraaf and Nu.nl report that a team of the Dutch rheumatologist Paul-Peter Tak of the Amsterdam Academic Medical Center will implant a kind of pacemaker, its size in the order of a bout a square centimeter, that will deliver stimuli to the vagus nerve for about one minute a day. By doing so, it is expected that inflammation of the joints of patients that suffer from rheumatoid arthritis can be reduced or even completely stopped.

Of course, what can be deduced from the article is that this pacemaker, electronics-wise, is nothing more than a simple blinking light with a timer, which can be implemented by means of a miniature microcontroller and a battery. However, it is also obvious that electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve, albeit at its infancy, is already very promising and a possible treatment of a wide range of neural disorders and pain is dawning at the horizon.

Wouter

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Posted in Electronics, General, Neurostimulation and Neuromodulation

Be gentle to the heart, otherwise you’ll lose it

Posted on 15/07/2011 by | Leave a comment

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute and Cornell University have come up with a low-energy pulse sequence to
restart hearts and make implants last longer is what we can read in IEEE Spectrum today. Other advantages of using a train (a burst) of pulses instead of using a single (tonic) pulse are that defibrillation becomes less painful to the patient and is less likely to evoke fibrillation elsewhere in the heart. The new therapy still has to be tested on patients, though. 

From this, it is only a small step towards realizing that other types of tissue should be stimulated with burst-like or even more exotic yet gentle pulses, too. In the Biomedical Electronics Group of Delft University of Technology, we’re working on interfacing with the brain in a more natural manner. Stay tuned…

Wouter

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Posted in General, Neurostimulation and Neuromodulation, Pacemakers

New way of data conversion

Posted on 08/07/2011 by | 1 comment

Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are indispensable building blocks of wearable and implantable biomedical data acquisition systems. Ultra-low-power ADCs for biomedical signal sensing have witnessed a dramatically reduced power consumption in recent years, but we have to admit that our biomedical systems need more breakthroughs than just squeezing harder in conventional ways.

As is known to all, many biomedical signals are born with a sparse nature. A large amount of redundant digital samples will be thus generated if we use Nyquist-rate ADCs to convert such signals. Most likely, ADC power savings are not a major concern in a system in which transmission power dominates the overall power consumption. However, if this is not the case, from a signal point of view, new ways of sampling or sensing are necessary to further improve the performance of the whole system.

A new and promising ADC approach for biomedical data acquisition is based on so-called level-crossing (LC) sampling, in which samples are generated only when the input signal crosses the threshold levels, so there is no redundant sample in this case. However, the conventional LC-ADC utilizes power hungry comparators and DACs, which causes the LC-ADC to consume much more power than ultra-low-power Nyquist ADCs (e.g., SAR ADCs). In our new approach (mentioned by Wouter earlier in the weblog), innovations at both system level and circuit level enble us to design a more power-efficient LC-ADC. Power consumption is now in the range of hundreds of nanowatts. We are currently investigating the possiblity to further improve its performance and reliability.

Yongjia

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Posted in Electronics, General, Medical Body Area Networks