Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This book is recommended as a complete encyclopaedia for neural prosthesis.
Thinking of an implanted device into the brain to replace or facilitate activation of neural elements in a part of the nervous system seems at first fanciful. However, the motivation to improve the quality of life of those severely paralyzed or suffering from profound losses to various sense organs has made the brain-computer interface more than just a reality, but a daily necessity. The recent advances in the broad, multidisciplinary and dynamic neural engineering filed have arisen through a combination of developments in our understanding of biological systems and in numerous technological fields including materials science, polymer chemistry, embedded electronics, micro-electromechanical (MEMS) systems and computer modeling.
This book is a good choice for people with different backgrounds in neural engineering filed because it offers an extensive investigation into the development and implementation of state-of-the-art advanced implantable neural prosthetic devices. It covers the different aspects associated with the implanted devices from biomedical approaches to microelectronics technologies and a broad range of prosthetic devices such as visual implants, cochlear implants, auditory implants, spinal cord stimulators, deep brain stimulators, Bion stimulators, the brain control and sensing of artificial limbs interface, and cardiac electro-stimulation devices. At the end, it introduces the progress in magnetic stimulation aimed for a non-invasive approach to prosthetic devices which is opposed to using implantable microelectrodes.
The structure of the book in each chapter which covers a neural prosthesis is similar. It is started with the abstract of the work and then a complete introduction about the history of the device. The biomedical engineering approaches which result in the importance and requirements of the device are presented and then the developed microelectronic technologies are reviewed. Different challenges in the design of the implanted device in biomedical or technological points of view are described and at the end the future works are presented. I found this method of presentation very useful and mark this as a strong point of this book.
The first chapter of the book is about the microelectronic visual prosthesis that is the strongest part of this book in my opinion due to the exhaustive and well organized information and challenges associated with the visual prosthesis design given to the reader. It includes both visual cortex and optic nerve stimulation devices and retina stimulation devices which the latter might be helpful for Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and age-related macular degeneration (AMD) diseases. Devices designed by Humayun and co-workers at Second Sight Company and Rizzo and Wyatt's group are given as examples for epiretinal approach which have been used in the human trials. The second part talks about the cochlear implants with a review on the history of this device which the first single electrode implanted in 1961. The different subsystems of a cochlear implant such as speech processor, radio frequency power and data transmission link, the stimulator ASIC and the electrode arrays have been explained with the consideration of their design goals and principles. The auditory midbrain implant (AMI) using deep brain stimulation is proposed as a new auditory prosthesis for stimulation of the inferior colliculus with the three human trials results. The cochlear implants are followed by spinal cord stimulation that is an important therapy for pain by electrically stimulating the spinal cord. The effects of the stimulation parameters such as pulse width and stimulation rate have been studied by doing clinical trials. Some diseases such as Parkinson, essential tremor, epilepsy, several types of dystonias and hyperkinetic disorders, and intractable depression can be treated by deep brain stimulation (DBS) which is discussed in another chapter of this book. The clinical DBS has shown the importance of electrode arrays to be scaled to achieve best outcomes and therefore this chapter of the book is devoted to the electrode array design for DBS application. Bion microstimulator, a small, leadless, minimally invasive, implantable device, that was developed as a means to provide small stimulators distributed in the patients body has been studied in another chapter of this book. These devices do not need interconnecting wires and their electrodes are mounted directly on the microstimulator and are capable of RF-powering. The main application of these devices is functional electrical stimulation (FES), including shoulder subluxation and post-stroke hand rehabilitation. It has also been explored in clinical applications for knee osteoarthritis rehabilitation, obstructive sleep apnea, and pressure ulcer prevention.
After the presenting the studies which have been done for different applications of Neurostimulation, this book has devoted a chapter to brain control and sensing of artificial limb. The idea is to make electrical connections to the neurons in the stump of an amputated limb and make an artificial limb relying onto the development of integrated circuits and digital signal processing. Some of the research and technology development in this field has been described in this book. Finally, the techniques of designing magnetic stimulation of neural tissue have been described in this book which results in non-invasive stimulation without implantation of microelectrodes. This chapter of the book presents an in vitro experimental system using a systematic design methodology.
One of the strong points of this book is the introduction given for each chapter. It has presented an exhaustive research on each device from the beginning and the case studies which have been fulfilled. The dynamic interactions between academia and industry for each application have been explained very well. The other strong point is the systematic design methodology presented for each neural prosthesis which includes all different important aspects involve in the design from anatomy of the implanted area in a biomedical approach, the candidate diseases in which the device might be useful, surgical techniques, clinical studies, implant packaging and biocompatibility of materials, thermal effects of stimulator on the tissue to microelectronic technology including wireless data and power transmission, stimulator ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) design, control unit design and microelectrode array design.
One of the most interesting sections of the book for me was the description of the ArgusTM 16 device that is an advanced retinal prosthesis proposed by Second Sight. This device consists of a wearable external device including a small camera housed in the glasses and connected to a visual processing unit and an implantable stimulator. The implanted stimulator chip is provided with both power and data wirelessly utilizing a wireless inductive link that is magnetically stabilized over the electronic implant. The electrode array is placed on the retinal surface and is connected through some wires to the stimulator chip which is surgically attached to the temporal area of the skull to receive the stimulus currents.
One of my recommendations for the readers of this book is to read the cochlear implants at first because as it has been also mentioned in the book, the design principle of the cochlear implant has been adopted for development of similar hearing implants such as the auditory brainstem implant as well as other neural prostheses such as vestibular and retinal implants.
Some of interesting quotes in this book are, "Cochlear implants served as a model for successful academic and industrial collaboration" and also "the design principle of the cochlear implant has been adopted for development of other neural prostheses such as retinal implants".
David. Zhou, one of the authors of this book is with Second Sight Medical Products Company and I think this is one of the reasons that the visual prostheses chapter of this book is written very well and more informative than the other chapters. However, this book provides very useful and exhaustive information about the different neural prostheses in different aspects such as biomedical approaches and also microelectronic devices.
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Implantable Neural Prostheses 1: Devices and Applications (Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering)This book and its companion volume describe state-of-the-art advances in techniques associated with implantable neural prosthetic devices and their applications. Researchers, engineers, clinicians, students and any specialist in this field will gain a deeper understanding of the neural prosthetic techniques currently available for a wide range of biomedical applications.In part one of this two-volume sequence, Implantable Neural Prostheses 1: Devices and Applications, the focus is on implant designs and applications. Devices covered include sensory prosthetic devices such as cochlear implants, auditory midbrain implants, visual implants, spinal cord stimulators, and motor prosthetic devices including deep brain stimulators, Bions, and cardiac electro-stimulators. Readers will also understand the regulatory approval process in the U.S. and Europe for implantable medical devices.
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