Descrizione del progetto
Uno strumento open-source per l’imaging cerebrale ad alta risoluzione
L’elettroencefalografia (EEG) è una tecnica non invasiva che riveste una fondamentale importanza per catturare l’attività elettrica del cervello e risulta cruciale per la diagnosi delle crisi epilettiche e per il progresso delle interfacce cervello-computer. Una delle principali sfide dell’imaging EEG consiste nel risolvere in modo efficiente il cosiddetto problema inverso, ovvero determinare la distribuzione dell’attività elettrica nel cervello sulla base delle misurazioni EEG dallo scalpo. Il progetto TurboEEG, finanziato dall’ERC, si prefigge di conseguire questo obiettivo sviluppando uno strumento di imaging EEG open-source che permette di ridurre la complessità computazionale e di migliorare drasticamente la velocità e l’accessibilità, fornendo un’innovazione che renderà la tecnologia EEG ad alta risoluzione più accessibile e ampiamente disponibile per la formazione e la ricerca sul cervello.
Obiettivo
Electroencephalography (EEG) from scalp potentials is a crucial non-invasive technique for imaging the electric brain activity. EEG is of primary importance in several scenarios of substantial societal impact ranging from electric characterization of epileptic seizures to the development of brain computer interfaces.
One of the key technologies in advanced EEG imaging is the source imaging/localization procedure where the volume electric current responsible for the scalp potential is obtained solving an inverse source problem, in turn requiring several solutions of the EEG forward problem. The imaging of the brain currents is what makes the standard EEG readings into high resolution EEG brain imaging.
Lamentably, the standard EEG forward problem has cubical computational complexity resulting in an eight times increase in computer memory and computational time every time the problem doubles in size. This substantially limits the impact of EEG imaging, especially in low power computational systems and in social settings that cannot afford expensive computing machines.
The object of the “TurboEEG” project is to radically change this paradigm, we will translate the outcomes of the ERC Consolidator Grant project “321” into the field of EEG neuroimaging obtaining and distributing the first existing EEG open source package that will solve the EEG imaging problem in linear complexity, speeding up standard EEG imaging of orders of magnitude and making high resolution EEGs widely available and cheap.
Since EEG source imaging is what translate a standard EEG device into an high resolution one, the new open source tool will have a substantial impact on society by making available high resolution EEG technology in environments where top computational power is not available, such as small hospitals, ambulatories, schools and universities. The new open-source tool will in fact also have a substantial impact on education, professional training, and brain research.
Programma(i)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
HORIZON-ERC-POC - HORIZON ERC Proof of Concept GrantsIstituzione ospitante
10129 Torino
Italia