The state and future of robotics applied to Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS): Key Neurotech Patent #25

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apparatus
– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 7,087,008

Today we are shar­ing a key 2006 patent assigned to The Regents of The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, the NIH, and the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Ser­vices. (As men­tioned, we are fea­tur­ing a foun­da­tion­al Per­va­sive Neu­rotech patent a day, from old­er to new­er by issue date)

U.S. Patent No. 7,087,008: Appa­ra­tus and meth­ods for deliv­ery of tran­scra­nial mag­net­ic stimulation.

  • Assignee(s): The Regents of The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas; The NIH, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Ser­vices Government
  • Inventor(s): Peter Fox, Jack Lancaster
  • Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Tran­scra­nial Stimulation
  • Issue Date: August 8, 2006

SharpBrains’ Take:

With a fair­ly exten­sive spec­i­fi­ca­tion (span­ning 19 illus­tra­tion sheets and 18 pages of writ­ten mate­r­i­al), the ‘008 dis­clos­es teach­ings that lever­age the pre­ci­sion of robot­ic move­ment capa­bil­i­ties to enhance tar­get­ed tran­scra­nial stim­u­la­tion. Four inde­pen­dent claims pro­vide broad and inter­weav­ing claim cov­er­age over the robotic/transcranial stim­u­la­tion sys­tem and meth­ods. Due to the impor­tance of pre­ci­sion tar­get­ing when apply­ing tran­scra­nial stim­u­la­tion, the increas­ing per­va­sive­ness of robot­ics in hos­pi­tals and treat­ment cen­ters, and the dif­fi­cul­ty that a par­ty seek­ing to use robot­ics for tar­get­ed stim­u­la­tion with­out poten­tial­ly falling with­in the scope of the patent claims, the ‘008 patent is a key non-inva­sive neu­rotech­nol­o­gy patent.

Abstract:

Dis­closed are appa­ra­tus and meth­ods for deliv­ery of tran­scra­nial mag­net­ic stim­u­la­tion. The appa­ra­tus includes a TMS coil which when ener­gized gen­er­ates an elec­tric field sub­stan­tial­ly par­al­lel to a long axis of the coil and sub­stan­tial­ly nor­mal to a sur­face of the coil. Fur­ther­more dis­closed an appa­ra­tus for deliv­ery of TMS in which a coil is adapt­ed to a robot­ic mem­ber for com­put­er-aid­ed con­trol and deliv­ery. Fur­ther dis­closed are meth­ods of TMS plan­ning and deliv­ery in which sub­ject images are uti­lized to plan, posi­tion and ori­ent the TMS coil for pre­cise deliv­ery. Dis­closed also are TMS coils hav­ing unique designs to bet­ter focus and direct mag­net­ic stimulation.

Illus­tra­tive Claim 14. A sys­tem comprising:

  • an active mem­ber capa­ble of move­ment under machine con­trol, the active mem­ber hav­ing a dis­tal por­tion and a prox­i­mal portion;
  • a tran­scra­nial mag­net­ic stim­u­la­tor cou­pled to the dis­tal por­tion of the active mem­ber to pro­vide mag­net­ic stim­u­la­tion to a subject;
  • a con­troller cou­pled to the active mem­ber to exe­cute instruc­tions; and
  • a con­troller-read­able medi­um cou­pled to the con­troller includ­ing instruc­tions to con­trol posi­tion­ing of the tran­scra­nial mag­net­ic stim­u­la­tor in accor­dance with a pre­de­ten­nined treat­ment plan for tran­scra­nial mag­net­ic stimulation.

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.