Towards real-time detection of seizures in awake rats with GPU-accelerated diffuse optical tomography

Advancement in clinically relevant studies like seizure interruption using functional neuro imaging tools has shown that specific changes in hemodynamics precede and accompany seizure onset and propagation. However, preclinical seizure experiments need to be conducted in awake animals with images reconstructed and displayed in real-time.

This article describes an approach that can be utilized to tackle these challenges. A subject specific head interface and restraining method was designed to allow for DOT to imaging of hemodynamic changes in unanesthetized rats during evoked acute seizures. Using CUDA programming model, the finite-element based nonlinear iterative algorithm for image reconstruction was parallelized.

Early hemodynamic changes were monitored in real time and observed tens of seconds prior to seizure onset. Utilizing the massive parallelization offered by graphic processing units (GPU), DOT was extended to online image reconstruction within 1s.

Pre-seizure state related hemodynamic changes were detected in awake rats. 3D monitoring of hemodynamic changes was performed in real time with our parallelized image reconstruction procedure.

Diffuse optical tomography (DOT) is a promising neuroimaging tool for the investigation of seizures in awake animals.