Wearable Device Makes Neuroimaging Accessible for Autistic Children

Wearable MEG technology is an ideal option for researchers working with infants, toddlers, and patients with developmental disorders, who may have challenges staying still during imaging studies.

Researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia are investigating a wearable brain imaging tool with a nearly $10 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. The study, a collaboration with Seattle Children's Hospital and FieldLine Inc., will illuminate intricate brain circuit activity in children with severe neurodevelopmental disorders, an under-represented population in clinical research.

The highly sensitive, wearable magnetoencephalography (MEG) technology will allow researchers to record a patient's whole-brain physiology while they are freely moving. By defining the frequency bandwidths and locations of the electrical activity that promotes intellectual development, the project will lay the groundwork for developing new therapies, particularly for children with "profound autism." This form of autism spectrum disorder is the most severe, in which patients have an IQ of less than 50 and are non- or minimally verbal.

Children diagnosed with profound autism are infrequently invited to participate in advanced research because of the perceived challenges in working with patients who have severe intellectual disabilities, according to Timothy Roberts, PhD, the project's co-principal investigator and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Radiology at CHOP.

"There is not only a societal imperative, but there is a scientific imperative to work with these children," said Dr. Roberts, who also heads CHOP's Program for Advanced Imaging Research. "How can the scientific community generalize its findings across a spectrum of patients, if we don't include everyone in that spectrum?"

MEG is one advanced imaging technique available at CHOP for researchers and clinicians to study electrical activity in the brain. During an MEG test, a helmet with more than 300 sensors and superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) is placed over a patient's head. The sensors in the helmet and a computer software work together to detect and record neuron activity as the patient lies still.

Due to its high sensitivity, CHOP neuroradiologists can use the safe, noninvasive technology to detect and pinpoint the location of tiny magnetic fields generated by brain activity. Those findings can help to make diagnoses, as well as to guide new areas of research, for patients diagnosed with epilepsy and other brain diseases.

However, autistic patients, as well as those with other neurodevelopmental and intellectual disabilities, often have difficulty remaining motionless during an MEG scan, making it challenging to accurately perform the assessment.

To overcome this challenge, FieldLine, a medical device developer and project collaborator, has created an optically pumped magnetometer MEG (OPM-MEG), which greatly increases sensitivity to brain electrical signals as compared to SQUID-MEG. During the first two years of the NIH-funded project, FieldLine will augment its HEDscan™ OPM-MEG system by integrating synchronized, motion-tracking capabilities. The HEDscanV technology will be able to track brain activity while a patient is moving.

"It's a way of scanning the brain at the rate of a high-speed film," Dr. Roberts said. "We'll be able to watch someone's brain as they explore objects, like as they pass a penny from one pair of fingers to the next."

In the second two years of the project, researchers at CHOP and Seattle Children's will validate the device in pediatric patients and aim to identify the bandwidths of electrical activity in brain circuits at the interface of movement and cognition that promote intellectual development.

Dr. Roberts anticipates these results will lead to the development of new therapies to address brain pathophysiology and facilitate intellectual development in children with neurodevelopmental disorders.

John Welsh, PhD, of Seattle Children's, and Orang Alem, PhD, of FieldLine, serve as co-principal investigators on this project.

Disclosures:

Dr. Roberts serves as a consultant for FieldLine Inc. and has financial interest in the company.