Researchers at York University are looking into ways to improve healthcare with brain technology. One of the goals of this technology is to make it as simple as wearing a headset that listens to brain waves and can predict a seizure before it happens to save lives and increase the independence of individuals with epilepsy. Another use of care would be creating a device that could interpret the intention behind movement in a person who has lost control of their limbs, creating more potential in neurorehabilitation.
Lassonde School of Engineering associate professor Hossein Kassiri and York University alumni Alireza Dabbaghian (PhD’24) are a step closer to making this possible with their Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) innovation. Wearable BCIs, though widely varied in design, such as headbands and headsets, capture real-time brain activity without surgical interventions.
Despite various forms of implantable and wearable BCIs in the market, the quality of brainwave recordings is a major issue. Outside of a controlled clinical setting, the quality of brain recordings decreases substantially since patient movements can contaminate data with noise, known as motion artifacts.
Kassiri and Dabbaghian’s team has created an innovative active digital electrode with advanced electronics embedded directly into each electrode. These devices can discern, isolate, and remove motion artifacts in real-time, ensuring clean signal recordings even with movement, offering clinical-grade data accuracy outside hospital settings, and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with non-invasive BCIs.
In the last seven years, Kassiri and Dabbaghian’s combined efforts resulted in two distinct products in the pipeline: licensing their active electrodes to existing headset manufacturers and creating their wearable headset built with the dual aim of providing high-quality signal recording solutions and ensuring user comfort across prolonged usage.
While hospitals have utilized brain signal recording for decades via electroencephalography (EEG), the potential extends far beyond these clinical walls due to wearable technologies.
Advancements in BCIs could alleviate the burden on healthcare systems with limited resources, lengthy wait times, and the need for specialist technicians and neurologists to interpret the data. And wearable devices enable continuous, real-time monitoring in the comfort of one’s home, and this York innovation opens doors to preventative medicine and personalized healthcare like never before.
The team’s success has been widely supported by the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation (VPRI) and York’s IP Innovation Clinic, the largest intellectual property (IP) legal clinic in Canada based out of Osgoode Hall Law School, providing pro bono legal support to community members looking for support.
Earlier this year, the researchers also received the $125,000 Idea to Innovation grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) which provides funding to college and university faculty members to support research and development projects with technology transfer potential.
VPRI supported Kassiri and his team in connecting them with Ontario-based associations, which helped secure letters of support for their NSERC grant application from CEOs interested in commercializing the technology. And this also helped them build a potential network of clinicians to test the technology. The IP Innovation Clinic offered support by conducting a prior art search, performing market research, and assisting with patent filing.
With the research groundwork laid and a functional prototype, the team is advancing towards developing a market-ready version of their technology that has the potential to change the way we live.
KEY QUOTE:
“With current products, if a person makes any movement such as talking, blinking, or frowning, it affects the quality of the recording significantly. It’s just going to be a lot of noise that is being picked up rather than actual brain waves.”
“You can’t do anything without clean data and the first step of any BCI-related application is to capture high-quality brainwaves. We’re moving in the direction of decoding what is happening in the brain, and neural technologies make it possible to read brain signals.”
“We are already in discussions with clinics and medical device companies who are interested in testing the prototype or potentially integrating the technology into their devices.”
- Hossein Kassiri
