February 11, 2016
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| NTU's low powered smart chip which recognises patterns and is the size of a Singapore 5 cent coin |
Scientists
at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed a
small smart chip that can be paired with neural implants for efficient wireless
transmission of brain signals.
Neural
implants when embedded in the brain can alleviate the debilitating symptoms of
Parkinson's disease or give paraplegic people the ability to move their
prosthetic limbs.
However,
they need to be connected by wires to an external device outside the body. For
a prosthetic patient, the neural implant is connected to a computer that
decodes the brain signals so the artificial limb can move.
These
external wires are not only cumbersome but the permanent openings which allow
the wires into the brain increases the risk of infections.
The
new chip by NTU scientists can allow the transmission of brain data wirelessly
and with high accuracy.
Assistant
Professor Arindam Basu from NTU's School of Electrical and Electronic
Engineering said the research team have tested the chip on data recorded from
animal models, which showed that it could decode the brain's signal to the hand
and fingers with 95 per cent accuracy.
"What
we have developed is a very versatile smart chip that can process data, analyse
patterns and spot the difference," explained Prof Basu.
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| NTU Asst Prof Arindam Basu holding his low-powered smart chip |
It is
about a hundred times more efficient than current processing chips on the
market. It will lead to more compact medical wearable devices, such as portable
ECG monitoring devices and neural implants,
since we no longer need large batteries to power them."
Different
from other wireless implants
To
achieve high accuracy in decoding brain signals,
implants require thousands of channels of raw data. To wirelessly transmit this
large amount of data, more power is also needed which means either bigger
batteries or more frequent recharging.
This is
not feasible as there is limited space in the brain for implants while frequent
recharging means the implants cannot be used for long-term recording of
signals.
Current
wireless implant prototypes thus suffer from a lack of accuracy as they lack
the bandwidth to send out thousands of channels of raw data.
Instead
of enlarging the power source to support the transmission of raw data, Asst
Prof Basu tried to reduce the amount of data that needs to be transmitted.
Designed
to be extremely power-efficient, NTU's patented smart chip will analyse and
decode the thousands of signals from the neural implants in the brain, before
compressing the results and sending it wirelessly to a small external receiver.
This
invention and its findings were published last month in the prestigious
journal, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits & Systems, by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the world's largest
professional association for the advancement of technology.
Its
underlying science was also featured in three international engineering
conferences (two in Atlanta, USA and one in China) over the last three months.
Versatile
smart chip with multiple uses
This
new smart chip is designed to analyse data patterns and spot any abnormal or
unusual patterns.
For
example, in a remote video camera, the chip can be programmed to send a video
back to the servers only when a specific type of car or something out of the
ordinary is detected, such as an intruder.
This
would be extremely beneficial for the Internet of Things (IOT), where every
electrical and electronic device is connected to the Internet through a smart
chip.
With a
report by marketing research firm Gartner Inc predicting that 6.4 billion smart
devices and appliances will be connected to the Internet by 2016, and will rise
to 20.8 billion devices by 2020, reducing network traffic will be a priority
for most companies.
Using
NTU's new chip, the devices can process and analyse the data on site, before
sending back important details in a compressed package, instead of sending the
whole data stream. This will reduce data usage by over a thousand times.
Asst
Prof Basu is now in talks with Singapore Technologies Electronics Limited to
adapt his smart chip that can
significantly reduce power consumption and the amount of data transmitted by
battery-operated remote sensors, such as video cameras.
The
team is also looking to expand the applications of the chip into commercial
products, such as to customise it for smart home sensor networks, in
collaboration with a local electronics company.
The
chip, measuring 5mm by 5mm can now be licensed by companies from NTU's
commercialisation arm, NTUitive.
Developed
over the past two years by a team of four at NTU's VIRTUS IC Design Centre of
Excellence, the project has since received over S$850,000 in research funding.
Explore further: Unravelling
the mind-body connection with power-efficient IC chip
More
information: Yi Chen et al. A 128-Channel Extreme Learning
Machine-Based Neural Decoder for Brain Machine Interfaces, IEEE Transactions
on Biomedical Circuits and Systems (2015). DOI: 10.1109/TBCAS.2015.2483618
http://phys.org/news/2016-02-smart-chip-low-powered-wireless-neural.html
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