Ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke have very different treatments, and mixing up the treatments can result in additional unnecessary brain death. Since medical professionals have never had neuroimaging aside from CT and MRI available for stroke triage, the current diagnostic paradigm requires hours of patient transport, waiting, scanning, and interpretation before treatment is initiated. Time as brain, and during the transport time of patients with acute cerebrovascular events, millions of neurons can permanently die, contributing towards the high rates of morbidity and mortality seen in stroke.
Recently, the technology underlying StrokeDx that uses eddy current damping techniques received a five-year $2.45M NIH R01 grant to further refine the device, test its ability to detect the depth and breadth of brain hemorrhage in patients, and develop algorithms to quickly and accurately classify brain lesions, as compared to CT and MRI scans.
The new device works as a rapid, portable, non-invasive, and affordable alternative to CT for stroke triage, with early studies showing a diagnostic time between 1 and 2.5 minutes for stroke sub-typing and imaging.
More information about this milestone can be read on the University of Southern California News webpage here.