Computer-assisted functional neurosurgery

Summary

Principal Investigator: B M Dawant
Affiliation: Vanderbilt University
Country: USA
Abstract: Movement disorders affect over 5,000,000 people in the United States. The two most common types of movement disorders are essential tremor (ET), which affects over 4,000,000 and Parkinson's Disease (PD), which affects over 500,000 people. Contemporary treatment of these diseases involves high-frequency stimulation through deep brain stimulation (DBS). This form of therapy is offered to patients who have begun to see failure with standard medical therapy and also to patients in which medical therapy is poorly effective. A DBS procedure involves the placement, with millimetric accuracy, of an electrode in the proximity of functional areas referred to as targets. The main difficulty with the procedure is the fact that targets of interest are not or poorly visible in any imaging modality (e.g., MRI or X-ray CT). Hence, the process of implantation of a DBS electrode is an iterative procedure. An approximate target position is determined pre-operatively from the position of adjacent structures that are visible in MR images. With the patient awake, this position is then adjusted intra- operatively, which is a lengthy process. The entire procedure can take 5-6 hours, and requires expertise from a neurosurgeon, an electrophysiologist, and a neurologist. This combined expertise is only available at a limited number of centers, which is one of the reasons why only 3000 procedures are performed annually despite the much larger number of patients who could benefit from it. The goal of this project is to develop a surgical guidance systems that will assist neurosurgeons in identifying targets of interest pre-operatively and in adjusting target position intra-operatively. If successful, the outcome of this project will be a system that will reduce the duration of the procedure, increase its rate of success, and make it feasible at sites that do not have the expertise found at leading research institutions
Funding Period: 2006-05-01 - 2010-02-28
more information: NIH RePORT

Top Publications

  1. ncbi Intersurgeon variability in the selection of anterior and posterior commissures and its potential effects on target localization
    Srivatsan Pallavaram
    Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn, USA
    Stereotact Funct Neurosurg 86:113-9. 2008
  2. ncbi Quantifying drug induced dyskinesia in Parkinson's disease patients using standardized videos
    Anusha S Rao
    Vanderbilt University, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Nashville, TN, USA
    Conf Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc 2008:1769-72. 2008
  3. ncbi Accuracy evaluation of microTargeting Platforms for deep-brain stimulation using virtual targets
    Ramya Balachandran
    Department of Otolaryngology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville TN 37232, USA
    IEEE Trans Biomed Eng 56:37-44. 2009
  4. ncbi Validation of a fully automatic method for the routine selection of the anterior and posterior commissures in magnetic resonance images
    Srivatsan Pallavaram
    Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
    Stereotact Funct Neurosurg 87:148-54. 2009

Scientific Experts

  • Ramya Balachandran
  • Srivatsan Pallavaram
  • Benoit M Dawant
  • Hong Yu
  • Pierre François D'Haese
  • Peter E Konrad
  • Anusha S Rao
  • Tatsuki Koyama
  • Joseph Neimat
  • Rui Li
  • Cissy Voight
  • Thomas L Davis
  • John Spooner
  • Bobby Bodenheimer
  • Robert E Bodenheimer

Detail Information

Publications4

  1. ncbi Intersurgeon variability in the selection of anterior and posterior commissures and its potential effects on target localization
    Srivatsan Pallavaram
    Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn, USA
    Stereotact Funct Neurosurg 86:113-9. 2008
    ..The additional effect of variation in the selection of the mid-plane on target localization is also evaluated...
  2. ncbi Quantifying drug induced dyskinesia in Parkinson's disease patients using standardized videos
    Anusha S Rao
    Vanderbilt University, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Nashville, TN, USA
    Conf Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc 2008:1769-72. 2008
    ..The severity score using our decision function showed a high correlation to the dyskinesia rating of a neurologist on the corresponding patient videos...
  3. ncbi Accuracy evaluation of microTargeting Platforms for deep-brain stimulation using virtual targets
    Ramya Balachandran
    Department of Otolaryngology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville TN 37232, USA
    IEEE Trans Biomed Eng 56:37-44. 2009
    ..Our results show that the microTargeting Platform exhibits submillimetric in vitro accuracy with a mean of 0.42 mm and a 99.9% level of 0.90 mm...
  4. ncbi Validation of a fully automatic method for the routine selection of the anterior and posterior commissures in magnetic resonance images
    Srivatsan Pallavaram
    Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN 37235, USA
    Stereotact Funct Neurosurg 87:148-54. 2009
    ..65 mm (95% confidence interval: 0.56-0.79) versus 1.21 mm (95% confidence interval: 0.91-1.47) for AC and 0.56 mm (95% confidence interval: 0.46-0.66) versus 1.06 mm (95% confidence interval: 0.82-1.26) for PC...