BTD SIGNED

Project "BTD" data sheet

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 Project objective

Dementia is a devastating neurodegenerative disease that causes tremendous suffering for patients and their families. The disease’s relentless progression leads to a loss of all mental abilities, making patients completely dependent on constant care and supervision. Even though the disease is incurable, there are treatments available that can postpone the patient`s mental decline for a few years.

Treatment is most beneficial if prescribed early, as soon as the first symptoms occur. However, the most common diagnostic methods, such as brain scanners, cerebrospinal fluid testing and clinical observation, either cannot detect early brain changes, are too expensive to be available for large-scale early diagnostics, are invasive, or can be administered only by specialists. Current diagnostic practice delays the diagnostic time by several years, making treatment much less effective. Due to a rapid mental decline, patients are robbed of the chance to decide on their own personal, legal and financial matters.

We propose a novel approach for early dementia diagnosis by using electroencephalography (EEG). EEG measures the electrical activity of the brain and is regularly used in clinical practice to diagnose epilepsy. However, EEG has enormous diagnostic potential that goes beyond epilepsy, but existing clinical EEGs are too bulky and difficult to use.

We are therefore developing a mobile, easy-to-use EEG for early dementia diagnosis. Since EEG was invented 100 years ago, the device itself is not a novelty and it is not difficult to build. But it is very difficult to find a biomarker for dementia in the acquired brain signals – we have managed to do just that by developing and successfully testing EEG-based algorithm for dementia diagnostic. This algorithm calculates recorded brain signal data and returns a simple score that indicates the likelihood that a person is suffering from dementia. Physicians can use it to diagnose patients early and prescribe treatment sooner.