脳波を解読できるインクベースの電子タトゥー(Ink-Based E-tattoo Can Decode Brainwaves)

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2024-12-04 テキサス大学オースティン校

テキサス大学オースティン校とカリフォルニア大学ロサンゼルス校の研究者たちは、頭皮に直接印刷できる導電性インクを開発し、これを用いた電子タトゥーで脳波を計測する新たな手法を発表しました。この技術は、個々の頭部形状をデジタルマッピングし、専用のアルゴリズムで設計されたEEGセンサーをロボットプリンターが非接触で導電性インクを噴射して印刷するものです。これにより、従来のEEG装置に比べて装着が容易で、長時間の脳波計測が可能となります。特に、脳波を用いたブレイン・コンピュータ・インターフェースの分野での応用が期待されています。

<関連情報>

パーソナライズされた脳波電子タトゥーのオンスカルプ印刷 On-scalp printing of personalized electroencephalography e-tattoos

Luize Scalco de Vasconcelos∙ Yichen Yan∙ Pukar Maharjan∙ … ∙ José del R. Millán ∙ Ximin He∙ Nanshu Lu
Cell Biomaterials  Published:December 2, 2024
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celbio.2024.100004

Graphical abstract

脳波を解読できるインクベースの電子タトゥー(Ink-Based E-tattoo Can Decode Brainwaves)

The bigger picture

On-scalp digital printing of custom-designed, temporary-tattoo-like sensors represents a groundbreaking advancement in noninvasive brain-monitoring technologies, advancing the fields of neuroscience, clinical diagnostics, and brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Traditional electroencephalography (EEG) systems involve time-consuming manual electrode placement, conductive liquid gels, and cumbersome cables, which are prone to signal degradation and discomfort during prolonged use. Our approach overcomes these limitations by combining material innovations with non-contact, on-body digital printing techniques to fabricate e-tattoos that are self-drying, ultrathin, and compatible with hairy scalps. These skin-conformal EEG e-tattoo sensors enable comfortable, long-term, high-quality brain activity monitoring without the discomfort associated with traditional EEG systems. Using individual 3D head scans, custom sensor layout design, and a 5-axis microjet printing robot, we have created EEG e-tattoos with precise, tailored placement over the entire scalp. The inks for electrodes and interconnects have slightly different compositions to achieve low skin contact impedance and high bulk conductivity, respectively. After printing and self-drying, the inks form conductive, stretchable, and breathable thin films that ensure high signal fidelity, even over extended periods. This technology paves the way for non-invasive, high-performance, and user-friendly brain monitoring that will enhance both patient care and the understanding of the human brain. The broader significance of this technology lies in its potential applications beyond traditional EEG use. On-scalp printed ultrathin e-tattoos could play a pivotal role in developing BCIs for various industries, including prosthetics, virtual reality (VR), and human-robot teaming. This work also opens the possibility of on-body digital manufacture of other types of e-tattoo devices in areas beyond the head, leading to large-area, skin-covered yet deformable and breathable functional e-tattoos.

Highlights

•On-scalp-printed EEG e-tattoos offer personalized, hair-compatible brain monitoring
•Microjet printing safely, precisely, and efficiently delivers custom sensor layouts
•Electrode and interconnect inks are separately designed for sensing and conducting
•Self-drying, skin-conformable e-tattoos enable long-term, high-fidelity EEG

Summary

Electroencephalography (EEG) is crucial for diagnosing neurological disorders and facilitating brain-computer interfaces. Traditional EEG setups with wet gels and cumbersome cables are labor intensive, uncomfortable, and degrade over time. Dry, skin-conformable e-tattoos offer a comfortable and user-friendly alternative but struggle with hairy scalps. To tackle this problem, we introduce non-contact digital printing of e-tattoos directly on the hairy scalp. Biocompatible inks are crafted for low-impedance electrodes and high-conductivity interconnects. The fabrication system includes a custom sensor layout design algorithm based on individual head scans and a 5-axis robot controlling a microjet printhead for safe and precise on-scalp ink delivery. After printing, these inks rapidly self-dry into conductive films perfectly conformed to scalp skin, with enhanced wearability, longevity, and skin adhesion compared with gel electrodes and transferred e-tattoos. Motion imagery and error-related potentials are effectively measured by these printed e-tattoos. This innovation heralds a new era in on-body manufacturing of personalized e-tattoos.

ASCENT: 肺炎の追跡と進行予測のためのカスタマイズされたICとディープラーニングアルゴリズムを用いたマルチモーダル胸部eタトゥー ASCENT: Multimodal chest e-tattoo with customized IC and deep learning algorithm for tracking and predicting progressive pneumonia

Nanshu Lu,Hongyu Miao,Craig Rusin,Shaolan Li,Parag Jain
Latest Amendment Date:April 25, 2022

ABSTRACT

Coronavirus infections may cause life-threatening pneumonia with a mortality rate more than 10% in certain populations, which could quickly overwhelm any medical care system. Continuous monitoring of the infected and suspected at the hospital or under self-quarantine can help optimize triage and treatment. However, so far there is no available mobile device and algorithm platform that can perform reliable, comprehensive, continuous and long-term monitoring and assessment for pneumonia patients in either clinical or free-living environments. The goal of this ASCENT research is to develop, integrate, and test foundational technologies required for a scalable monitoring and triage system for patients who have contracted pneumonia. The objective is to integrate a wireless, noninvasive, week-long wearable, and multimodal physiological sensor platform (e-tattoos) with a dedicated integrated circuit (IC), connect it to an FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) cleared virtual patient monitoring platform (Sickbay) which also hosts a customized deep learning algorithm, for the continuous monitoring and assessment of the severity of progressive pneumonia. The result will be a gamechanging hardware and software system that provides continuous monitoring and intelligent assessment for highly-infectious and critically-ill patients but also protects healthcare providers from infection and contamination.

There is a longstanding systems challenge that the world lacks long-term, high-fidelity, continuous and scalable clinical surveillance platforms for infectious disease patients to battle with global pandemic like COVID-19. The progression of pneumonia is associated with the changes in vital signs such as core body temperature, respiratory rates, heart rates, blood oxygen saturation and so on. Since clinical deterioration of patients at risk of developing pneumonia can be short and unpredictable, continuous multimodal monitoring and accurate assessment is necessary for this population, whether in the hospitals or at home. The five investigators bring together well-established expertise in multimodal wearable sensors (Lu), mixed signal IC design (Li), time-series data analytics (Miao), clinical systems integration and scalable patient monitoring (Rusin), as well as critical care medicine (Jain). This multidisciplinary engineering and clinical team attempt to address this system-level challenge through: 1) development of wireless wearable sensors called e-tattoo with dedicated IC capable of noninvasive and week-long multimodal patient monitoring; 2) data analysis and deep learning algorithm development and integration with e-tattoo through an FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) cleared virtual patient monitoring platform, Sickbay; 3) e-tattoo and algorithm validation on 20 patients with progressive pneumonia at Texas Children?s Hospital. The broader impacts for the society are dramatically improving how critically ill patients are monitored as well as training next generation engineers to carry out convergent research. The ultimate vision is to establish a scalable means of safely surveilling patients and orchestrating high-quality care across the country.

This award reflects NSF’s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation’s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

グラフェンe-タトゥー:異種蛇行リボンが可能にする、手のひら上の邪魔にならない歩行型皮膚電気活動センシングのためのグラフェンe-タトゥー Graphene e-tattoos for unobstructive ambulatory electrodermal activity sensing on the palm enabled by heterogeneous serpentine ribbons

Hongwoo Jang,Kaan Sel,Eunbin Kim,Sangjun Kim,Xiangxing Yang,Seungmin Kang,Kyoung-Ho Ha,Rebecca Wang,Yifan Rao,Roozbeh Jafari & Nanshu Lu
Nature Communications  Published:03 November 2022
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34406-2

Fig. 1

Abstract

Electrodermal activity (EDA) is a popular index of mental stress. State-of-the-art EDA sensors suffer from obstructiveness on the palm or low signal fidelity off the palm. Our previous invention of sub-micron-thin imperceptible graphene e-tattoos (GET) is ideal for unobstructive EDA sensing on the palm. However, robust electrical connection between ultrathin devices and rigid circuit boards is a long missing component for ambulatory use. To minimize the well-known strain concentration at their interfaces, we propose heterogeneous serpentine ribbons (HSPR), which refer to a GET serpentine partially overlapping with a gold serpentine without added adhesive. A fifty-fold strain reduction in HSPR vs. heterogeneous straight ribbons (HSTR) has been discovered and understood. The combination of HSPR and a soft interlayer between the GET and an EDA wristband enabled ambulatory EDA monitoring on the palm in free-living conditions. A newly developed EDA event selection policy leveraging unbiased selection of phasic events validated our GET EDA sensor against gold standards.

医療・健康
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