We have developed a novel (patent pending) electric field measurement technology called Electric Field Encephalography (EFEG) for brain signal monitoring. NeuroFieldz technology is comprised of a system of high density array of sensors for measuring and analyzing the electric fields generated by the brain arising from intrinsic activity or external stimuli. The EFEG brain monitoring technique is a new modality that has several advantages over the current modalities, electroencephalography EEG (which measures the electric potential on the scalp) and magnetoencephalography MEG (which measures the magnetic field). Compared with MEG, EFEG has higher spatial resolution, is unaffected by stray magnetic fields, and does not require expensive bulky cryogenic equipment, thus making it field-deployable. Compared with EEG, EFEGTM is reference-less, has higher spatial resolution, leads to increased number of uncorrelated signals, and improves source reconstruction precision. EFEG also provides dynamical information on millisecond time scales which is much faster than fMRI. The accurate source localization provided by EFEG will be of immense benefit in analyzing and localizing neurological signals (e.g. epileptic), as well as understanding the brains response to external stimuli
Related Publications
Versek, Craig William; Banijamali, Mohammad Ali S; Bex, Peter J; Lashkari, Kameran; Kamarthi, Sagar V; Sridhar, Srinivas Portable Objective Diagnostics using Visual Evoked Potentials for Age-related Macular Degeneration Journal Article In: medRxiv, 2020. Abstract | Tags: Neurotechnology, Opthalmology Sridhar, Srinivas; Versek, Craig; Bex, Peter Portable brain and vision diagnostic and therapeutic system Miscellaneous 2019, (US Patent App. 16/347,049). Abstract | Tags: Neurotechnology, Opthalmology Versek, C; Frasca, T; Zhou, J; Chowdhury, K; Sridhar, S Electric field encephalography for brain activity monitoring Journal Article In: Journal of neural engineering, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 046027, 2018. Abstract | Tags: Nanomedicine, Opthalmology@article{versek2020portable,
title = {Portable Objective Diagnostics using Visual Evoked Potentials for Age-related Macular Degeneration},
author = {Craig William Versek and Mohammad Ali S Banijamali and Peter J Bex and Kameran Lashkari and Sagar V Kamarthi and Srinivas Sridhar},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-01-01},
journal = {medRxiv},
publisher = {Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press},
abstract = {Delayed Dark Adapted vision Recovery (DAR) is a biomarker for Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD); however, its measurement is burdensome for patients and examiners. We developed a portable, wireless, quick-setup system that employs a headset with a smartphone to deliver and analyze controlled dichoptic photobleach and pattern reversal stimuli, and with custom electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes, to measure objective Dark Adapted Visual Evoked Potentials (DAVEP) at multiple locations of the visual field in one comfortable 20-minute session, without requiring subject reporting. DAVEP responses post photobleach (up to 15 minutes), were measured concurrently in both eyes of 13 patients with AMD and 8 others not diagnosed with AMD. New unexpected features were observed in the DAVEP responses at high latencies to scotopic stimulus intensities. The amplitude recovery of the DAVEP response was significantly delayed in AMD patients compared with controls. We developed DAVEP1 scores, a simple metric for DAR, using it to successfully identify all 100% of AMD subjects and correctly classify 90% of subject eyes. Deficits in DAR in patients with AMD can be identified with this objective VEP based system using the DAVEP1 metric, a promising new objective biomarker for this disease that can be easily tested in a clinic.},
keywords = {Neurotechnology, Opthalmology},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
@misc{sridhar2019portableb,
title = {Portable brain and vision diagnostic and therapeutic system},
author = {Srinivas Sridhar and Craig Versek and Peter Bex},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-10-01},
abstract = {A portable wireless neuromonitoring device can be used to diagnose and/or treat conditions of the brain and vision system. The device includes a sensor unit mountable on the head of a human subject and capable of recording signals from the brain in EEG and/or EFEG (electric field encephalography) mode, and the device can be used for simultaneous stimulus display and recording with latency of less than 1 millisecond. The device also includes electrodes that allow rapid set-up and measurement with low impedance contact with the scalp. The device can also be used in conjunction with virtual reality or alternate reality environments.},
note = {US Patent App. 16/347,049},
keywords = {Neurotechnology, Opthalmology},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {misc}
}
@article{versek2018electric,
title = {Electric field encephalography for brain activity monitoring},
author = {C Versek and T Frasca and J Zhou and K Chowdhury and S Sridhar},
year = {2018},
date = {2018-01-01},
journal = {Journal of neural engineering},
volume = {15},
number = {4},
pages = {046027},
publisher = {IOP Publishing},
abstract = {Objective. We describe an early-stage prototype of a new wireless electrophysiological sensor system, called NeuroDot, which can measure neuroelectric potentials and fields at the scalp in a new modality called Electric Field Encephalography (EFEG). We aim to establish the physical validity of the EFEG modality, and examine some of its properties and relative merits compared to EEG. Approach. We designed a wireless neuroelectric measurement device based on the Texas Instrument ADS1299 Analog Front End platform and a sensor montage, using custom electrodes, to simultaneously measure EFEG and spatially averaged EEG over a localized patch of the scalp (2 cm × 2 cm). The signal properties of each modality were compared across tests of noise floor, Berger effect, steady-state visually evoked potential (ssVEP), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and others. In order to compare EFEG to EEG modalities in the frequency domain, we use a novel technique to compute spectral power densities and derive narrow-band SNR estimates for ssVEP signals. A simple binary choice brain–computer-interface (BCI) concept based on ssVEP is evaluated. Also, we present examples of high quality recording of transient Visually Evoked Potentials and Fields (tVEPF) that could be used for neurological studies. Main results. We demonstrate the capability of the NeuroDot system to record high quality EEG signals comparable to some recent clinical and research grade systems on the market. We show that the locally-referenced EFEG metric is resistant to certain types of movement artifacts. In some ssVEP based measurements, the EFEG modality shows promising results, demonstrating superior signal to noise ratios than the same recording processed as an analogous EEG signal. We show that by using EFEG based ssVEP SNR estimates to perform a binary classification in a model BCI, the optimal information transfer rate (ITR) can be raised from 15 to 30 bits per minute—though these preliminary results are likely sensitive to inter-subject variations and choice of scalp locations, so require further investigation. Significance. Enhancement of ssVEP SNR using EFEG has the potential to improve visually based BCIs and diagnostic paradigms. The time domain analysis of tVEPF signals shows robust features in the electric field components that might have clinical relevance beyond classical VEP approaches.},
keywords = {Nanomedicine, Opthalmology},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
