Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AEGEUS (AEGEUS - A Novel EEG Ultrasound Device for Functional Brain Imaging and Neurostimulation)
Berichtszeitraum: 2023-03-01 bis 2024-02-29
AEGEUS - A Novel EEG Ultrasound Device for Functional Brain Imaging and Neurostimulation - is an EU-funded project involving seven partners from four different countries: Germany, Austria, Italy, and Iceland. The long-term vision of AEGEUS is to develop a highly innovative analysis and stimulation device to aid in the management of brain diseases such as epilepsy. The approach is based on the combination of existing electroencephalography (EEG), a new approach to functional ultrasound (US) imaging, and ultrasound-based neuro-stimulation. EEG is an established neurological method to analyze the electrical activity of the brain. It enables the acquisition of data with high temporal resolution, especially recording brain activity of neocortical structures in close proximity to the skull. This will be supplemented by an US component, which is envisioned to complement the EEG module by detecting functional information from deeper brain regions. Furthermore, targeted ultrasound can stimulate and suppress neural activity. As a final result, localized, non-invasive stimulation of the brain could be delivered and controlled with the same device. In the future, US stimulation could be even realized in a closed-loop manner for therapeutic purposes. As part of the AEGEUS project, the newly developed device will undergo proof-of-concept testing regarding detection and stimulation feasibility and safety in healthy volunteers and patients with epilepsy. We believe that the device developed in AEGEUS will lead to new avenues for diagnosis, treatment and research of neurological diseases.
Within the first year, the AEGEUS project has set up the basic requirements for designing and testing the novel prototype. To start out, the clinical specifications have been defined, including the requirements from stakeholders and users who will be working with the device, as well as the main target applications. The target application for the proof-of-concept study in healthy volunteers and patients with epilepsy will be initially focused on two regions of interest which were chosen in line with the complementary nature of EEG and US. Because of the higher resolution of the EEG on the surface, the neocortical region of the motor cortex was chosen. In contrast, the hippocampus is a brain region that lies deep under the cortex, out of range for the EEG to capture its signal, but – so our vision – more accessible to functional US. Motor cortex studies have been conducted over many years with EEG, for clinical and neuroscientific purposes, and its detectability is relevant for some forms of epilepsy and even more so for motor or other disorders that directly or indirectly via neuroplasticity processes affect these regions (e.g. after stroke, spinal cord injury, etc.). The hippocampus is highly relevant in a neurological context as it represents the neuropathological location for the most common form of medication-resistant epilepsy, that is, temporal lobe epilepsy. For this region, the use of US is intended to shed more light on deep brain functional activity than what is currently possible with EEG. Thus, the hope is that a future EEG-US device facilitates diagnosis of this important medical condition. The clinical specification was used to drive the further specification of hardware and software. Software workflows for their joint interplay were laid out. The first ultrasound hardware was designed and integrated into different tomography layouts and the first reconstruction algorithms were implemented. As AEGEUS pursues a development cycle of several iterations, developments in hardware and software design are still ongoing. The first technical milestone is the development of the initial prototype in 2024.