Treating sleep-related breathing conditions–such as sleep apnea–via EEG brainwave analysis: Key neurotechnology patent #28

– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 7,190,995

Today we dis­cuss a 2007 patent assigned to Regents of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, the NIH and the US Dep­tart­ment of Health and Human Services.

U.S. Patent No. 7,190,995: Sys­tem and method for analy­sis of res­pi­ra­to­ry cycle-relat­ed EEG changes in sleep-dis­or­dered breathing

• Assignee(s): Regents of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan; NIH and U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services
• Inventor(s): Ronald D. Chervin, Joseph W. Burns, Niko­las S. Sub­ot­ic, Christo­pher Roussi
• Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: EEG
• Issue Date: March 13, 2007

SharpBrains’ Take:

The ‘995 patent applies EEG tech­nol­o­gy to mea­sur­ing a rel­e­vant fea­ture to every­one’s life: breath­ing. Specif­i­cal­ly, the res­pi­ra­to­ry mea­sure­ment cycle may be used to treat sleep-relat­ed breath­ing con­di­tions such as sleep apnea, hypop­nea and sleep frag­men­ta­tion. The dif­fer­ence in pow­er of the EEG sig­nal is used to cal­cu­late res­pi­ra­to­ry cycles at var­i­ous brain wave fre­quen­cies (e.g., alpha, delta, etc.) and used to infer breath­ing prob­lems or treat­ments to pro­mote health­i­er sleep­ing pat­terns. The ‘995 patent recites 40 claims with many of the depen­dent claims encom­pass­ing var­i­ous embod­i­ments towards mea­sur­ing and clas­si­fy­ing res­pi­ra­to­ry cycle fea­tures. Despite a poten­tial com­pet­i­tive design-around by using an EEG fea­ture oth­er than pow­er for cycli­cal res­pi­ra­to­ry assess­ments, the numer­ous and broad claim cov­er­age of an EEG appli­ca­tion to sleep and breath­ing result of the ‘995 patent result con­tribute its assess­ment as a key non-inva­sive neu­rotech­nol­o­gy patent.

Abstract:

A sys­tem and method for deter­min­ing res­pi­ra­to­ry cycle-relat­ed EEG changes (RCREC) for a sub­ject with sleep-dis­or­dered breath­ing are pro­vid­ed. The method includes receiv­ing an EEG sig­nal from the sub­ject using at least one sen­sor, and defin­ing at least two res­pi­ra­to­ry cycle seg­ments with­in each res­pi­ra­to­ry cycle. The method fur­ther includes deter­min­ing an EEG pow­er of the EEG sig­nal dur­ing each of the at least two res­pi­ra­to­ry cycle seg­ments, and deter­min­ing RCREC by cal­cu­lat­ing a dif­fer­ence between a max­i­mum EEG seg­ment pow­er and a min­i­mum EEG seg­ment power.

Illus­tra­tive Claim 38. A com­put­er read­able medi­um for deter­min­ing res­pi­ra­to­ry cycle-relat­ed EEG changes (RCREC) in a sub­ject, the medi­um comprising:

• com­put­er read­able instruc­tions for deter­min­ing an EEG pow­er of a received EEG sig­nal for a plu­ral­i­ty of res­pi­ra­to­ry cycle seg­ments, and deter­min­ing RCREC by cal­cu­lat­ing a dif­fer­ence between a max­i­mum EEG seg­ment pow­er and a min­i­mum EEG seg­ment power.

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.