Researchers at Stanford have developed a device that gives any medical professional the ability to listen to brain waves and confidently detect silent seizures- the neurological condition where patients have epileptic seizures without any of the associated bodily convulsions. Much like the physical stethoscopes a doctor uses to check the heart or lungs of a patient, the “brain stethoscope” is a device worn over a patient’s head that translates the brain’s electrical activity into sounds using a custom algorithm.
To create the algorithm, Stanford researchers worked with a specialist in computer music for several years. “This technology will enable nurses, medical students, and physicians themselves to actually assess their patient right there and they will be able to determine if the patient is having silent seizures,” says Josef Parvizi, a professor of neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford University.The brain stethoscope will help solve a basic problem: many epileptic seizures go undetected and untreated. Physical side effects of seizures don’t always accompany the seizure itself, but the internal damage still occurs and can be catastrophic when prolonged.
To guarantee the algorithm’s success, Parvizi wanted to ensure all medical professionals could detect a seizure, not just those trained in epilepsy diagnosis. Parvizi enlisted medical student Kapil Gururangan and clinical assistant professor of neurology Babak Razavi to gather a team of volunteers. 34 medical students and 30 nurses listened to 84 brainwave samples, called electroencephalograms or EEGs, 32 of which included some sort of seizure reaction. Overall, medical students and nurses were 97 percent accurate in deciphering the seizure-like events from normal brain waves. By comparison, when medical students and nurses tried to correctly read an EEG, the group was only accurate 50 percent of the time.
Next, the team wants to figure out how physicians in the field will use this technology in their practice, and based on the early positive results, there is a high probability. The team published their findings on March 21 in the medical journal Epilepsia.
