Low-Power Implantable Device for Onset Detection and Subsequent Treatment of Epileptic Seizures: A Review

Over the past few years, there has been growing interest in neuro-responsive intracerebral local treatments of seizures, such as focal drug delivery, focal cooling, or electrical stimulation. This mode of treatment requires an effective intracerebral electroencephalographic acquisition system, seizure detector, brain stimulator, and wireless system that consume ultra-low power. This review focuses on alternative brain stimulation treatments for medically intractable epilepsy patients. We mainly discuss clinical studies of long-term responsive stimulation and suggest safer optimized therapeutic options for epilepsy. Finally, we conclude our study with the proposed low-power, implantable fully integrated device that automatically detects low-voltage fast activity ictal onsets and triggers focal treatment to disrupt seizure progression. The detection performance was verified using intracerebral electroencephalographic recordings from two patients with epilepsy. Further experimental validation of this prototype is underway.