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Central Nervous System
Importance of Neural Monitoring
As many as 50% of Americans experience some type of sleep disorder and each year over 700,000 people are hospitalized for a stroke. Neural disorders, including sleep conditions, CNS disorders and neurodegeneration diseases, have a significant impact on quality of life, which is driving the development of drugs and therapies for effective treatment. The importance of screening new CNS drug therapies will continue to grow with the availability of suitable tools for the measurement and analysis of EEG and related parameters.
Telemetry and Neural Monitoring
Implantable wireless telemetry has been in mainstream use for years for monitoring various physiologic parameters, including temperature, heart rate, ECG, blood pressure, physical activity, and others. Implantable telemetry offers the following advantages over traditional methods:
- Animals are free to move about their cage environments without restriction
- Data may be collected continuously for hours, days, weeks, or months
- No need to hassle with complicated external tethering systems
- Immune to 60Hz interference common with external monitoring solutions
- More realistic data because factors that disrupt normal sleep are eliminated
The historical lack of appropriate analysis tools has hindered the widespread use of telemetry in EEG-related applications, including sleep conditions, CNS disorders and neurodegenerative disease. In many cases those wishing to perform sleep studies have not been wholly familiar with surgical placement of telemetry devices and the technical nature of the analysis techniques used for most EEG analysis.
Telemetry Models
DSI offers telemetry monitoring for 1-4 biopotential channels in animals ranging in size from mice and rats to dogs and primates. All DSI telemetry models provide a measurement of locomotor activity, and many provide measurements of other physiologic parameters such as blood pressure and temperature.
Several simple lead placements have been established and are illustrated below. See the table on the following page for a summary of available transmitter models for EEG applications. DSI data acquisition systems can also simultaneously collect room light and room temperature – features often useful for sleep studies. With DSI's newest CNS transmitter, the 4ET, researchers can easily collect 4 channels of any combination of EEG, EMG, EOG or ECG data plus temperature, around-the-clock. The 4ET transmitter is DSI’s first dual module device, enabling long-term studies through a minor subcutaneous telemetry module replacement to extend battery life.
Hardwired Amplifiers
DSI offers non-telemetry systems that record EEG and EMG signals along with measurements of blood pressure and respiration using traditional hardwired amplifiers. Hardwired solutions offer simultaneous measurement of multiple inputs, high bandwidth and a very low noise floor for recording and analyzing data.
CNS Software
NeuroScore™ is DSI’s analysis software platform specifically designed for Central Nervous System (CNS) applications. NeuroScore can read data acquired with Dataquest ART or Ponemah acquisition software as well as European Data Format (EDF/EDF+) and other file types. This may include data collected by implantable telemetry, surface telemetry, or hardwired amplifiers. Process hours or days of data in just minutes!