116 results about "Cerebrospinal fluid" patented technology

A non-invasive method for analyzing the blood-brain barrier includes obtaining a Raman spectrum of a selected portion of the eye and monitoring the Raman spectrum to ascertain a change to the dynamics of the blood brain barrier. Also, non-invasive methods for determining the brain or blood level of an analyte of interest, such as glucose, drugs, alcohol, poisons, and the like, comprises: generating an excitation laser beam (e.g., at a wavelength of 600 to 900 nanometers); focusing the excitation laser beam into the anterior chamber of an eye of the subject so that aqueous humor, vitreous humor, or one or more conjunctiva vessels in the eye is illuminated; detecting (preferably confocally detecting) a Raman spectrum from the illuminated portion of the eye; and then determining the blood level or brain level (intracranial or cerebral spinal fluid level) of an analyte of interest for the subject from the Raman spectrum. In certain embodiments, the detecting step may be followed by the step of subtracting a confounding fluorescence spectrum from the Raman spectrum to produce a difference spectrum; and determining the blood level and / or brain level of the analyte of interest for the subject from that difference spectrum, preferably using linear or nonlinear multivariate analysis such as partial least squares analysis. Apparatus for carrying out the foregoing methods are also disclosed.

A non-invasive method for analyzing the blood-brain barrier includes obtaining a Raman spectrum of a selected portion of the eye and monitoring the Raman spectrum to ascertain a change to the dynamics of the blood brain barrier.Also, non-invasive methods for determining the brain or blood level of an analyte of interest, such as glucose, drugs, alcohol, poisons, and the like, comprises: generating an excitation laser beam at a selected wavelength (e.g., at a wavelength of about 400 to 900 nanometers); focusing the excitation laser beam into the anterior chamber of an eye of the subject so that aqueous humor, vitreous humor, or one or more conjunctiva vessels in the eye is illuminated; detecting (preferably confocally detecting) a Raman spectrum from the illuminated portion of the eye; and then determining the blood level or brain level (intracranial or cerebral spinal fluid level) of an analyte of interest for the subject from the Raman spectrum. In certain embodiments, the detecting step may be followed by the step of subtracting a confounding fluorescence spectrum from the Raman spectrum to produce a difference spectrum; and determining the blood level and / or brain level of the analyte of interest for the subject from that difference spectrum, preferably using linear or nonlinear multivariate analysis such as partial least squares analysis. Apparatus for carrying out the foregoing methods are also disclosed.

Devices, systems and methods for treating pain or other conditions while minimizing possible complications and side effects. Treatment typically includes electrical stimulation and / or delivery of pharmacological or other agents with the use of a lead or catheter. The devices, systems and methods provide improved anchoring which reduces migration of the lead yet allows for easy repositioning or removal of the lead if desired. The devices, systems and methods also provide for simultaneous treatment of multiple targeted anatomies. This shortens procedure time and allows for less access points, such as needle sticks to the epidural space, which in turn reduces complications, such as cerebral spinal fluid leaks, patient soreness and recovery time. Other possible complications related to the placement of multiple devices are also reduced.

A shunt for draining cerebral spinal fluid from the brain is provided. In an embodiment, the shunt includes a master control unit that is located in the abdomen, which interconnects a ventricular catheter and a second catheter, typically located in the peritoneal cavity. In a specific embodiment, the master control unit includes a variety of ‘smart’ features including at least one access port to allow the injection of solutions for the prevention or removal of blockages in the catheter, and / or antibiotics. The access port can have other uses, such as allowing a point of access for physical navigation of a catheter or the like within the shunt, thereby providing another option for breaking-up blockages, and / or allowing an access point for repairing the shunt's components. Additionally, the master control unit includes a diagnostic unit that transmits, either wirelessly or through a wired connection via the access port, diagnostic information about the status of the patient and / or the shunt.

This invention relates to achieving or improving uniform distribution of fluid flow in medical devices such as when combined with antibiotics impregnated in a catheter and / or with a drug-eluting catheter to further inhibit the catheter from becoming occluded by debris in the CSF or by bacterial biofilm formation or tissue proliferation in the catheter.

In one embodiment, the invention provides a device for decreasing intracranial or intraocular pressures. The device comprises a housing having an inlet opening and an outlet opening that is adapted to be interfaced with a person's airway. The device further includes a valve system that is operable to regulate respiratory gas flows through the housing and into the person's lungs during spontaneous or artificial inspiration. The valve system assists in lowering intrathoracic pressures during each inspiration to repetitively lower pressures in the venous blood vessels that transport blood out of the head to thereby reduce intracranial or intraocular pressures.

A system for reducing the damaging effects of radiant energy, blast, or concussive events includes applying pressure to at least one jugular vein to reduce the egress of blood from the cranial cavity during or before the incidence of the imparting event. Reducing blood outflow from the cranial cavity increases intracranial volume and / or pressure of the cerebrospinal fluid to reduce the risk of traumatic brain injury and injuries to the spinal column. Reducing blood outflow further increases the intracranial pressure and volume, and thereby increases the pressure and volume of the cochlear fluid, the vitreous humor and the cerebrospinal fluid to thereby reduce the risk of injury to the inner ear, internal structure of the eye and of the spinal column. In addition, increasing intracranial pressure and volume reduces the likelihood of brain injury and any associated loss of olfactory function

The invention relates to a subcutaneous valve having opening pressure that can be adjusted non-invasively from the outside, said valve comprising a body presenting a chamber with a cylindrical inside side wall, an inlet duct and an outlet duct for cerebospinal fluid both opening out in said side wall, a valve member such as a ball placed at the inside end of said inlet duct, a spring blade fitting closely to the side wall of said chamber and urging the valve member against its seat, and a moving member controlled from the outside and provided with means for locking it in a determined position, the length of the spring blade acting on the valve member being determined by the position of said moving member. The valve is remarkable in that said moving member is constituted by a resilient flexible arcuate blade fitting closely to the cylindrical inside wall of said chamber. The valve is applicable to the treatment of hydrocephalus.

Normal pressure hydrocephalus is treated by removing cerebralspinal fluid (CSF) from a CSF space of a patient. In particular, CSF is drained while pressure within the CSF space remains within an expected normal range for the patient.

The skull patch making process includes the following steps: computerized tomographic imaging to acquire the information of the skull defect part of the patient and the peripheral soft tissue, image designing to reconstruct the 3D head prototype of the patient, designing the dummy for the defect part, leading the designed dummy camber into fast laser forming machine for making patch mold, and final jointing, comparing and cutting titanium web plate to form the ultimate skull patch. The present invention has high precision, low cost, short making period and excellent post-operational restoring.

The present invention relates to methods of diagnosing, prognosing or treating diseases or disorders in which elevated levels of Abeta protein, including abeta1-42 are prevalent. In particular, the present invention relates to methods of diagnosing, prognosing or treating a major or minor depressive episode / disorder attributed to elevated levels of Abeta protein, including abeta1-42, found particularly in body fluids including whole blood, blood cells, serum, plasma, urine and CSF. The invention also relates to the treatment of these disorders by administering an agent that either prevents production of Abeta, prevents aggregation of Abeta fibrils, or that increases the degradation or clearance of Abeta. In addition, the invention provides a method of treating or preventing a major or minor depressive disorder comprising administering an agent that prevents or interferes with Abeta-induced neurotoxicity. The present invention also relates to pharmaceutical compositions comprising such agents and methods of screening for novel agents.

The presence of a pathologic process in a lung of a mammal is detected by applying exhaled gas of a mammal to an electronic nose (12). Data derived from the electronic nose (12) is used to determine whether a pathologic process is present in the lung of the mammal. The pathologic process may also be a lung infection such as pneumonia. Also, a mammalian fluid sample obtained from the sinus or nose is applied to an electronic nose (12) to determine if the fluid sample contains significant amounts of cebrospinal fluid.

Method for processing digital images, such as magnetic resonance images of a brain. The images contain a first object, for example the cerebrum white matter, a second object, for example the cerebral cortex, and a third object, for example the cerebrospinal fluid. The method involves providing a digital dataset representing a deformable curve or surface that in an initial state approximates the boundary between the first object and the second object. Further, a vector force field is provided that for each point on the deformable curve or surface defines a direction from the point approximately towards the second boundary between the second and the third object, and this vector force field is applied for iteratively deforming the deformable curve or surface convergently towards the second boundary. In order to reconstruct a folded structure of the second object, for example the cortex, the vector force field also involves a normal vector field with a vector normal or approximately normal to the deformable curve or surface for each point on the deformable curve or surface.

The continuous carbon fiber reinforced composite material for bone repair is prepared with continuous carbon fiber, continuous carbon fiber felt or continuous carbon fiber, cloth through soaking in methyl methacrylate monomer or pre-polymer and subsequent extruding or bulk molding. The composite material of the present invention includes methyl methacrylate and carbon fiber, and the carbon fiber content is 20-80 wt%. The composite material may be used as the external fracture fixing material, internal fracture fixing material and bone repairing material. The composite material has the features of light weight, no interference on NMR examination and excellent biocompatibility. It may be implanted inside life body without negative effect on tissue, blood, etc.

SNAP-25 (synaptosomal associated protein) is purified from cerebrospinal or amniotic fluid for immunoassay and quantitation. Quantitation of these proteins is useful in the diagnosis and monitoring of brain disorders and diseases such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer's.

The invention relates to a subcutaneous valve having opening pressure that can be adjusted non-invasively from the outside, said valve comprising a body presenting a chamber with a cylindrical inside side wall, an inlet duct and an outlet duct for cerebospinal fluid both opening out in said side wall, a valve member such as a ball placed at the inside end of said inlet duct, a spring blade fitting closely to the side wall of said chamber and urging the valve member against its seat, and a moving member controlled from the outside and provided with means for locking it in a determined position, the length of the spring blade acting on the valve member being determined by the position of said moving member. The valve is remarkable in that said moving member is constituted by a resilient flexible arcuate blade fitting closely to the cylindrical inside wall of said chamber. The valve is applicable to the treatment of hydrocephalus.

The invention relates to a KNN (K-Nearest Neighbor) sorting algorithm based method for correcting and segmenting the grayscale nonuniformity of an MR (Magnetic Resonance) image, belonging to the field of image processing. The method comprises the following steps of: firstly constructing a grayscale nonuniform field model by utilizing surface fitting knowledge and using a group of orthonormalization basis functions, and establishing energy functions; and then solving model parameters according to an energy function minimization principle to realize grayscale nonuniformity correction and image segmentation, wherein subordinate functions are solved by adopting an iterative algorithm and the KNN algorithm in the model parameter solving process, therefore a partial volume effect is greatly reduced while a grayscale nonuniform field is eliminated, and the influence of noises on the correction and the segmentation of the grayscale nonuniformity of the MR image is reduced. The subordinate functions are solved with KNN through the following steps of: firstly acquiring an accurate smooth normalization histogram by using a kernel estimation algorithm; then respectively solving a threshold value TCG between cerebrospinal fluids and gray matters and a threshold value TGW between the gray matters and white matters by using a maximum between-cluster variance method; carrying out rough sorting on the KNN sorting algorithm by utilizing the two threshold values; and finally accurately sorting points to be fixed by adopting the traditional KNN sorting algorithm.

A monitor-driven intracranial catheter assembly including dual lumen catheter for monitoring intracranial pressure via a pressure sensor located in one lumen while simultaneously draining cerebrospinal fluid through another lumen. A third lumen can also be provided with a side port for receiving a stylet. The stylet is used as a stiffening agent to aid in advancing the catheter into the patient's brain. The pressure sensor is preferably a spectral modulation sensor that communicates with a photodetector apparatus by means of a single optical fiber, thus minimizing the diameter of the catheter. The photodetector is self-correcting for signal errors caused by temperature change, changes in intensity of the input light, and transmission losses within the optical apparatus. Moreover, the photodetector operates off the output voltage of the standard hospital monitor by “scaling” the signal from the monitor to provide a pressure measurement signal that emulates the output of a piezoresistive strain gauge sensor or Wheatstone bridge. Therefore, the entire catheter assembly is designed to be used with any of the common types of hospital monitors. The pressure monitoring catheter assembly can be used in any situation requiring very sensitive pressure measurements and can be zeroed and calibrated in situ.

The present disclosure provides methods of treating a disease in a non-rodent mammal comprising administering to the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of the non-rodent mammal an rAAV2 particle containing a vector comprising a nucleic acid encoding a therapeutic protein inserted between a pair of AAV inverted terminal repeats in a manner effective to infect an ependymal cell in the non-rodent mammal, wherein the ependymal cell secretes the therapeutic protein so as to treat the disease.

An implantable cerebral spinal fluid flow device and method. A body has an inlet for the cerebral spinal fluid, an outlet for the cerebral spinal fluid and a first interior cavity fluidly coupled with the inlet and the outlet. A first rotational element is mounted in the first interior cavity in a pathway between the inlet and the outlet. The first rotational element provides resistance to flow of the cerebral spinal fluid from the inlet to the outlet. In the method, the cerebral spinal fluid flow device is implanted. Resistance to rotation of the first rotational element to flow of the cerebral spinal fluid from the inlet to the outlet is provided.

A wireless motion capture test head system including at least one motion capture element, an isolator, mount and an external computer. The motion capture element(s) may include a memory, a wireless motion capture sensor, a radio and a microcontroller. The microcontroller may collect sensor values data from the wireless motion capture sensor, store the data in the memory, analyze the data, recognize an event within the data to determine event data, and transmit the event data associated with the event via the radio. The isolator may surround the at least one motion capture element to simulate physical acceleration dampening of cerebrospinal fluid around a human brain, in order to minimize translation of linear acceleration and rotational acceleration of the event data to obtain an observed linear acceleration and an observed rotational acceleration of the at least one motion capture element coupled in an inner portion of a headform.

The invention relates to medical biomaterial technical field. The currently popular post operation tissue blocking preventing agent has the disadvantages that internal degradation time is fast, operation steps are cockamamie, and the agent is not applicable to minimally invasive surgery. The invention aims at providing an antiblocking material with favorable temperature responsivity, biocompatibility and biodegradability, namely a temperature sensitive chitosan preparation as well as the preparation method and application thereof. The invention, by carrying out hydroxyl butylation reaction on chitosan, controls reaction condition, attaches the chitosan with unique temperature responsivity and maintains other inherent biological characteristics of the chitosan. The temperature sensitive chitosan preparation of the invention has favorable temperature sensitive property and favorable gelatin recoverability, and is easy to operate in operation application; the favorable biocompatibility ensures the safety of the application of the temperature sensitive chitosan; the gelation time and internal residence time are controllable, thus meeting different application requirements; and animal experiments of the post operation tissue blocking and the cerebrospinal leakage prove that the invention has good clinical application prospect.

The invention provides a device capable of automatically controlling drainage volume which can be connected to wound or body cavity effusion drainage tubes such as urinary vessels, abdominal dropsy drainage tubes, closed thoracic drainage tubes, pericardial catheter drainage tubes, ventricular drainage tubes, T drainage tubes, and fistula drainage tubes to realize draining and flushing and especially for the condition that there may be leakage of cerebrospinal of spinal postoperation incision. By means of the automatic drainage volume control device, the drainage tubes can be automatically clipped and closed after the preset drainage volume is reached; at the same time, the negative pressure of the drainage device can be regulated and monitored to realize accurate drainage to avoid complications due to excessive or insufficient drainage and be helpful for the healing of wounds.

The invention discloses a novel lipid material which is used for prolonging the circulation time and increasing drug targets to be transmitted to the brain. According to the novel lipid material, polyethylene glycol is used for bridging, one side of polyethylene glycol is connected with cholesterol, and the other side of polyethylene glycol is connected with glucose and vitamin C, so that the defect of the targeting capability of lipidosomes modified by single glucose or vitamin C is made up for, transfer for crossing a blood-brain and blood-brain spinal fluid dual barrier is achieved, the brain targeting of drugs is improved, and the central concentration of the drugs is increased. The novel lipid material can be used for different dosage forms including liposomes, nanoparticles and micelles, and paclitaxel liposomes prepared from the material have an obvious brain targeting function and wide application prospects.

The invention relates to a Chinese traditional medicine composition for treating hydrocephalus, cerebral edema and intracranial hypertension which comprises fish encephalolith, raw astragalus root, oriental water plantain rhizome, Poria cocos, plantain seeds, notoginseng, root of red rooted saliva, sweetgum fruit, grassleaved sweetflag rhizome, evodia rutaecarpa, and achyranthes and cyathula root.

An in vitro method and a kit for the quantification of antibodies anti-beta amyloid protein in a sample of cerebrospinal fluid comprising the following steps a) concentrating the quantity of said antibodies of said sample with magnetic micro beads coated with macromolecules capable of binding said antibodies b) analysing the concentrated sample obtained in step a) by immunoenzyme assay or by radioimmunoassay; c) analysing a sample comprising antibodies anti-beta amyloid protein having a known titre with the same assay used in step b) and elaborating the related calibration curve, wherein said antibody having a known titre is a murine antibody belonging to the IgG2a or IgG2b class or a human or humanized antibody belonging to the IgG2b or IgGi class.