Engineering Professor Walt Besio launched medical device company, CREmedical Corporation (www.cremedical.com), to bring new brain monitoring and therapy devices to market. CREmedical’s system dramatically increases the resolution, signal quality, and effectiveness over conventional devices. The system monitors brainwaves and can be used to detect life threatening events and potentially stop seizures. By conducting electricity into and out of specific brain areas, the therapy device aims to pinpoint areas to treat epilepsy, a severe neurological disorder associated with abnormal electrical activity of the brain. CREmedical’s technology will reduce costs and risks to the patient as it is designed to detect and control seizures non-invasively, on the scalp’s surface. Brain monitoring and neuromodulation products are discussed more comprehensively on CREmedical’s web site.
Electroencephalography (EEG) is the recording of brain electrical activity from the scalp. Artifact contamination seriously hinders the effectiveness of EEG and is a root cause of misdiagnosis. Software filtering solutions are available to “clean” the signal. All digital software solutions, however, represent transformed data and do not faithfully return the biological signal, so clinicians and researchers cannot be certain that the transformed data accurately reflect the physiology.
tEEG – Brain Monitoring
CREmedical’s brain monitoring device, known as tEEG, uses ultra-sensitive electrodes, the Tripolar Concentric Ring Electrodes (TCREs), to detect signals on the scalp’s surface. Unlike software filtered data that do not represent the underlying biology, tEEG automatically provides artifact suppression and is reality-based. High frequency oscillations (HFOs) are considered biomarkers for early seizure development and epileptogenic zone. By providing a non-invasive method to consistently detect HFOs from the scalp, CREmedical’s high-fidelity tEEG can potentially help predict when a person may have a seizure like those associated with epilepsy.
TFS – Transcranial Focal Electrical Stimulation
CREmedical develops the world’s first commercial tripolar transcranial focal electrical stimulator, or TFS. TFS is a unique, painless, noninvasive, and focused stimulation modality utilizing CREmedical’s Tripolar Concentric Ring Electrodes (TCREs) and custom-built stimulators. TFS via TCREs has a uniform current density and focused stimulation directly below the electrodes with a very steep electric field, which is an advantage over transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) or other transcranial stimulation methods.
CREmedical Corporation has received Small Business Innovation Research grants from the National Science Foundation and the Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) to commercialize its technology. The University of Rhode Island Research Foundation is an early investor. CREmedical works with local manufacturers and engineering firms to design and prototype its devices.
