System for the creation of patient specific templates for epileptiform activity detection: Key Neurotech Patent #6

– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 6,353,754

Today we are shar­ing a 2002 patent assigned to Neu­ropace, Inc.

U.S. Patent No. 6,353,754: Sys­tem for the cre­ation of patient spe­cif­ic tem­plates for epilep­ti­form activ­i­ty detection.

• Assignee(s): Neu­ropace, Inc.
• Inventor(s): David R. Fis­chell, Jonathan P. Harwood
• Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Hybrid
• Issue Date: March 5, 2002

SharpBrains’ Take:

The ‘754 patent address­es chal­lenges asso­ci­at­ed with detect­ing an immi­nent seizure, which often requires steps unique and spe­cif­ic to the each indi­vid­ual patient. Wave­form analy­sis tools may be used to process EEG sig­nal chan­nel data to select the best set of epilep­tic activ­i­ty detec­tor tem­plate para­me­ters, which may be pro­vid­ed with­in a physi­cian’s work­sta­tion to aid the physi­cian in diag­noses and tem­plate test­ing to opti­mize seizure detec­tion pri­or to using any treat­ment devices. Tech­niques are dis­closed for down­loaded the tem­plate into an implan­ta­tion device that can pro­vide elec­tri­cal stim­u­la­tion treat­ment, mak­ing the ‘754 patent span both inva­sive and non-inva­sive appli­ca­tions. As one of the ear­li­er patents to dis­close auto­mat­ed EEG sig­nal-based seizure detec­tion tech­niques, the util­i­ty pro­vid­ed in assist­ing physi­cians per­form what would oth­er­wise be a man­u­al analy­sis of data and the broad pro­tec­tion afford­ed by the claim set (com­pris­ing four inde­pen­dent claims and 37 inde­pen­dent claims) are amongst the fac­tors mak­ing the ‘754 patent a key non­in­va­sive neu­rotech­nol­o­gy patent.

Abstract:

An epilep­ti­form activ­i­ty patient tem­plate cre­ation sys­tem is pro­vid­ed which per­mits the user to effi­cient­ly devel­op an opti­mized set of patient spe­cif­ic para­me­ters for epilep­ti­form activ­i­ty detec­tion algo­rithms. The epilep­ti­form activ­i­ty patient tem­plate cre­ation sys­tem is pri­mar­i­ly direct­ed to a com­put­er soft­ware pack­age which oper­ates with­in a com­put­er work­sta­tion hav­ing a proces­sor, disk stor­age and dis­play for stor­ing, pro­cess­ing and dis­play­ing patient EEG sig­nals. The com­put­er proces­sor in con­junc­tion with the soft­ware pack­age allows for the mark­ing of the initiation/termination of elec­tro­graph­ic seizures with­in the patien­t’s dis­played EEG sig­nals. Epilep­ti­form activ­i­ty seg­ments are extract­ed from at least one of the EEG sig­nals with the activ­i­ty seg­ments includ­ing a marked ini­ti­a­tion of a seizure. Sub­se­quent­ly, a seizure data set simul­ta­ne­ous­ly dis­play­ing a num­ber of the epilep­ti­form activ­i­ty seg­ments is shown on the dis­play mon­i­tor. Epilep­ti­form activ­i­ty is then detect­ed from the dis­played seg­ments by an epilep­ti­form activ­i­ty detec­tion algo­rithm hav­ing at least one pro­gram­ma­ble epilep­ti­form activ­i­ty detec­tion para­me­ter. The tem­plate is then cre­at­ed and mod­i­fied to opti­mize epilep­ti­form activ­i­ty detec­tion. The final tem­plate can then be down­loaded to an implantable neu­ropace­mak­er for epilep­tic seizure con­trol through respon­sive stimulation.

Illus­tra­tive Claim 24. A sys­tem for for­ma­tion and test­ing of a tem­plate for the detec­tion of epilep­ti­form activ­i­ty from a patien­t’s brain comprising:

• a com­put­er work­sta­tion hav­ing proces­sor means, disk stor­age means and dis­play means for stor­ing, pro­cess­ing and dis­play­ing a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of EEG signals;
• said proces­sor means including:
• means for mark­ing an ini­ti­a­tion and ter­mi­na­tion of elec­tro­graph­ic seizures with­in said mul­ti­plic­i­ty of dis­played EEG sig­nals; and
• means for extract­ing epilep­ti­form activ­i­ty seg­ments from at least one EEG sig­nal, each of said epilep­ti­form activ­i­ty seg­ments includ­ing a marked ini­ti­a­tion of each of said elec­tro­graph­ic seizures.

To learn more about mar­ket data, trends and lead­ing com­pa­nies in the dig­i­tal brain health space –dig­i­tal plat­forms for brain/ cog­ni­tive assess­ment, mon­i­tor­ing and enhance­ment– check out this mar­ket report. To learn more about our analy­sis of 10,000+ patent fil­ings, check out this IP & inno­va­tion neu­rotech report.