EEG Data Monitoring System Used in Conjunction with fMRI

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In the United States, approximately 600,000 patients have epilepsy uncontrolled by medication [29]. Approximately 3,000 of these patients every year in the USA are treated surgically to relieve from medically refractory seizures [48]. The main goals of the proposed project is to develop and demonstrate the feasibility of data acquisition of clean EEG brain signals in conjunction with MRI, using fields up to a maximum of seven (7) Tesla. The simultaneous measurement of fMRI and EEG will enable neuroscientists to study various physiological brain states such as (a) EEG a-waves, (b) sleep, and (c) anesthesia and pharmacologically induced changes of brain activity, leading to more useful diagnostic procedures. Electroencephalography (EEG) and functional MRI (fMRI) provide complementary information about the timing and location of brain processes. Understanding brain processing requires both types of data. We aim to (1) develop DSP hardware and software (firmware) for noise cancellation to use in the existing prototype for simultaneous EEG and MRI acquisition system based on an adaptive filtering technique; (2) test and improve the system with the use of a special phantom with a piezo-electric transducer to mimic Ballistocardiogram noise; (3) test the real-time version of the adaptive filter on the data acquired. While the main goal of this project is to develop hardware and signal-processing code for the EEG system for research studies in conjunction and simultaneously with fMRI, the system will also have value for the basic science community interested in functional brain imaging, and could have important implications for the monitoring of neuronal activity in other clinical populations (e.g., epilepsy, migraine, coma/neurology ICU, stroke).