A MULTIDISCIPLINARY team of clinicians, scientists and engineers at University College Cork (UCC) has created a device that enables doctors to detect seizures and brain injuries in newborn babies.
The team has been using EEG (measurements of electrical brain activity) to investigate brain injury and seizures of this type. Their invention, the EEG Seizure Detection technology, has won joint first prize in the inaugural Invention of the Year Awards for UCC research.
The only accurate technique available for diagnosing all seizures in babies is EEG, which is expensive and requires highly specialised technical and medical personnel to acquire and interpret the results. Most neonatal units in Europe lack this expertise and have to rely on clinical judgment to diagnose seizures, which is known to be inaccurate.
“It was therefore imperative that a seizure-detection system that was simple to operate, easy to interpret and that provided reliable accurate information was developed,” said Dr Gordon Lightbody of the Department of Electrical Electronic Engineering. This is what the UCC team has done.
Through Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and Wellcome Trust funding, the team first developed a signal processing system based on EEG to help medical staff identify seizures in newborn babies without the need for complicated equipment or an expert to interpret the results.
This research is important because seizures are more common in the neonatal period than during any other time throughout life.