Brian Caballo
Pronouns: he/him
Research Mentor(s): Enrico Opri
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Biomedical Engineering / Engineering
Program: UROPF
Session: Session 2 (10:00am – 10:50am)
Authors: Brian Caballo, Enrico Opri
Abstract
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery has become a standard therapy for Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders. This procedure involves the implantation of an implanted pulse generator, which will deliver targeted stimulation to subcortical areas that are known to alleviate pathological symptoms such as tremors, stiffness, or rigidity. DBS surgery requires the clinical team to carefully plan the trajectory of implantation, which is further refined intraoperatively using a technique called functional mapping. At the same time, the clinical team needs to test the therapeutic efficacy of the stimulation through the implanted DBS electrode before the end of the surgery, to ensure the optimal location had been selected. This typically requires adjusting parameters, such as the amplitude, frequency, and pulse width of the delivered therapeutic stimulation. As this is a time-consuming trial-and-error process, creating a device that allows the clinical team to effectively manipulate these parameters with high specificity and high convenience for testing purposes is ideal. In this work, we focus on implementing a platform that will be used by the clinical team to assist in DBS testing on patients affected by neurological-based movement disorders, with the goal of minimizing the clinical burden of this procedure, and seamlessly integrating the support of multiple electrode manufacturers with a unified interface.
