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In this paper numerous alternative treatments in addition to pharmacological therapy are proposed for their use in epileptic patients. Epileptic animal models can play a crucial role in the performance evaluation of new therapeutic techniques. The objective of this research is to first develop various epileptic rat models; second, develop a portable wireless closed-loop seizure controller including on-line seizure detection and real-time electrical stimulation for seizure elimination; and third, apply the developed seizure controller to the animal models to perform on-line seizure elimination. The closed-loop seizure controller was applied to three Long-Evans rats with spontaneous spike-wave discharges (non-convulsive) and three Long-Evans rats with epileptiform activities induced by pentylenetetrazol (PTZ) injection (convulsive) for evaluation. The seizure detection accuracy is greater than 92% (up to 99%), and averaged seizure detection latency is less than 0.6 s for both spontaneous non-convulsive and PTZ-induced convulsive seizures. The average false stimulation rate is 3.1%. Near 30% of PTZ-induced convulsive seizures need more than two times of 0.5 s electrical stimulation for suppression and 90% of the non-convulsive seizures can be suppressed by only one 0.5 s electrical stimulation.

In this paper, the design of a smart headband for epileptic seizure detection is presented. The proposed headband consists of four key components: 1) an analog front-end circuitry; 2) an epileptic seizure detection tag (ESDT); 3) a Bluetooth low-power chip; and 4) customized electrodes. All the above components are integrated into a fabric headband with only 50.3 g. The smart headband system dissipates 55.89 mW. The epileptic seizure detection algorithm inside ESDT is validated by using Boston Children’s Hospital’s CHB-MIT scalp EEG clinical database with the detection rate of 92.68% and the false alarm of 0.527/h. We develop a service APP connected to the cloud so that the patients’ health condition can be recorded and then referenced by doctors for further diagnosis or research.

BackgroundAlthough many studies have found abnormalities in subcortical grey matter (GM) in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy or generalised epilepsies, few studies have examined subcortical GM in focal neocortical seizures. Using structural and tensor magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), we evaluated subcortical GM from patients with extratemporal lobe epilepsy without visible lesion on MRI. Our aims were to determine whether there are structural abnormalities in these patients and to correlate the extent of any observed structural changes with clinical characteristics of disease in these patients.MethodsTwenty-four people with epilepsy and 29 age-matched normal subjects were imaged with high-resolution structural and diffusion tensor MR scans. The patients were characterised clinically by normal brain MRI scans and seizures that originated in the neocortex and evolved to secondarily generalised convulsions. We first used whole brain voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to detect density changes in subcortical GM. Volumetric data, values of mean diffusivity (MD) and fractional anisotropy (FA) for seven subcortical GM structures (hippocampus, caudate nucleus, putamen, globus pallidus, nucleus accumbens, thalamus and amygdala) were obtained using a model-based segmentation and registration tool. Differences in the volumes and diffusion parameters between patients and controls and correlations with the early onset and progression of epilepsy were estimated.ResultsReduced volumes and altered diffusion parameters of subcortical GM were universally observed in patients in the subcortical regions studied. In the patient-control group comparison of VBM, the right putamen, bilateral nucleus accumbens and right caudate nucleus of epileptic patients exhibited a significantly decreased density Segregated volumetry and diffusion assessment of subcortical GM showed apparent atrophy of the left caudate nucleus, left amygdala and right putamen; reduced FA values for the bilateral nucleus accumbens; and elevated MD values for the left thalamus, right hippocampus and right globus pallidus A decreased volume of the nucleus accumbens consistently related to an early onset of disease. The duration of disease contributed to the shrinkage of the left thalamus.ConclusionsPatients with neocortical seizures and secondary generalisation had smaller volumes and microstructural anomalies in subcortical GM regions. Subcortical GM atrophy is relevant to the early onset and progression of epilepsy.

Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is the most frequently acquired infection among patients that receive mechanical ventilation in the intensive-care unit (ICU). The mortality rate for VAP lies in the 20-to-50% range and could be even higher in some ICUs. A standard operation procedure to VAP treatment includes a sequence of chest radiography, sputum gram stain, sputum culture, and empiric therapy, initially with antibiotics covering broad pathogens. However, collection of the gram stain and culture of lower respiratory tract specimen is usually not time-efficient (up to 5 days), delaying the initiation of therapy and unacceptable for critically ill patients. A rapid and accurate diagnosis for VAP is therefore crucial, but still unavailable. It is known that microorganisms generate complex metabolites during infection. Fast detection is feasible by examining metabolic wastes in proximal end of the expiratory device, demanding a miniaturized, battery-powered, gas-sensing device. In this work, a fully integrated low-power nose-on-a-chip with a robust learning kernel is developed for such a vital clinical need. Figure 24.5.1 shows the target application scenario and a top-level system view of the nose-on-a-chip. With a 3D structure, the chip integrates 8 sensors on top and processing circuits at the bottom, completely in a standard CMOS process. The signal-processing circuits include an 8-channel adaptive sensor interface, a SAR analog-to-digital converter (ADC), a RISC processor core with an 8K×32b cache memory, and a dedicated continuous restricted Boltzmann machine (CRBM) kernel for data clustering. With the scalability to form a larger array of chips, massive sensor information can be processed efficiently in parallel to enhance sensing performance for a diversity of applications. Figure 24.5.2 describes the principle of the nose-on-a-chip and the nanocomposite sensing materials. Distinct sensing materials deposited on the interdigitated electrodes (IDE) form an array of sensors. The collective response from the sensor array constructs unique gas fingerprints. Polymer-carbon composites are used for sensing materials. The carbon-based materials can be: carbon black, carbon nanotube, and mesoporous carbon, where mesoporous carbon has demonstrated superior sensitivity and reversibility. Mesoporous carbon is fabricated from platelet-shaped mesoporous SBA-15 silica and polymers are grown onto the carbon, as shown in the SEM images.The sensing material is deposited on the IDE, as shown in Figure 24.5.3. The passivation layer is removed with the 400×400μm 2 opening windows. An 8-channel adaptive interface reads out the sensor signals. The interface circuit works as a negative-feedback loop to tune out long time constant signals such as temperature, humidity, and background odors. This sensor interface consumes 215μW. A 0.5V 10b SAR ADC with a charge-average switching (CAS) technique [1] is adopted. The CAS DAC generates top-plate voltage shift by charge averaging instead of conventional charging and discharging oper...

An on-line seizure detection method that can be applied to monitor continuous iEEG signals of patients who suffered from TLE was developed. An IC selection strategy to automatically determine the most seizure-related IC for seizure detection was also proposed. The system has advantages of (1) high detection accuracy, (2) low false alarm, (3) short detection latency, and (4) energy-efficient design for hardware implementation.

A low-cost, high-efficiency, compact archilecture of a PWM (pulse-width-modulationr drive fan controller is designed for use in an embedded multicomputer system with an integrated hierarchicai thermal management schema. This pure digital design yields lower cost and higher efficiency than conventional linear drive fan controllers while providing the functionality and advantages of PWM drive fan controllers. The implementation and system integration of this circuit is also described in this paper.

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