ABOUT DECI
Cerebral Diagnostics Canada Inc. has developed a new brain imaging system called Dynamic Electrical Cortical Imaging or DECI.
EEG was a disruptive technology in its time, and has been a viable product for over 70 years. Our technology represents a major advance which stands on the shoulders of EEG. EEG currently displays crude waveforms of neural activity as hills and valleys on a screen. It has been known for decades that these waveforms were just the tip of an iceberg, and that they were pale reflections of deeper more meaningful events in the brain. Because of past limitations in mathematics, specifically, an unsolved problem called the “inverse problem??, researchers were unable to pinpoint where in the brain particular waveforms were coming from. Dramatic advances in mathematics have positioned our company to make major strides, and has allowed for the creation of DECI.
Our main accomplishment has been to successfully view the generators of electrical field activity emanating from deep inside the brain, in real-time and in three dimensions
DECI, like other non-invasive neuroimaging modalities such as fMRI, creates both 2-D and 3-D still images of the brain. However, DECI goes beyond other imagining systems by visualizing the very rapidly changing electrical fields within the brain as brain movies. DECI is non-invasive and those having their brain scanned merely wear a soft electrode head-cap.
DECI can make over 2000 images of the brain per second. This is an order of magnitude faster than fMRI or PET scans of the brain.
To operate DECI, all that is required is an ordinary desktop computer and a high-end commercial amplifier which sells for 15 thousand dollars. fMRI machines cost 3.5 million dollars, and MEG machines cost 10 million dollars.
We believe that our technology is truly disruptive. To explain why this is the case a little background is needed: There are measuring sticks in the imaging industry to evaluate new technologies. The main ones are called “temporal resolution?? and “spatial resolution??. Temporal resolution refers to the ability for the technology to distinguish between events in the brain that are separated in time; and spatial resolution is the same idea but for space. An outstanding technology would have both high temporal and spatial resolution. Further, an excellent technology would be safe, require no special facilities, be portable, and affordable. High temporal resolution is like having a fact shutter speed. The electrical fields of the brain shift with astounding rapidity, hence a fast technology, like that of DECI, is needed to understand brain function.
DECI’s temporal resolution is second to none, and on par with Magnetoencephalography (MEG). DECI can presently differentiate between events occurring in the brain which are 1/2048th of a second apart. Its spatial resolution is reasonably good, and improving. Currently we resolve space to cubes of 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 cm. This resolution divides the brain into approximately 6400 cubes which allows for good localization of brain activity for many clinical and research purposes.
We make brain movies in real time and so the person under study can see his own brain thinking in real time. However, the shifts are so fast that it is impossible to make much sense of them. For this reason we have added numerous software visualization and signal analysis features to extract meaning.