Company

Improving neurological health is one of the key challenges of the twenty-first century. Electrical Geodesics Incorporated (EGI) has developed a dense array electroencephalography (dEEG) technology that is now widely used in human neuroscience research laboratories around the world, addressing topics such as the mechanisms of visual attention, the abnormal frontal lobe development in autism, and the neurophysiological processes of normal sleep.

To bring this research technology to clinical practice, EGI introduced clinical dEEG systems for long-term monitoring for epilepsy evaluation. As with other applications of neurological assessment, the result is improved guidance of therapy (in this case, neurosurgical intervention). With the accuracy of 128- and 256-channel recordings, the dEEG analysis can be registered precisely with magnetic resonance images to align brain function with brain anatomy. Because the Geodesic EEG System is comfortable and easy to apply, new markets are developing for which patient acceptance and efficiency of clinical protocol are primary considerations, such as routine clinical EEG and sleep medicine.

With strong US Small Business Innovation Research funding over the last decade, EGI has broadened its technology platform to include multimodal forms of neuroimaging with dEEG at the core. These include simultaneous functional MRI (fMRI) and dEEG, simultaneous magnetoencephalography (MEG) and dEEG, and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and dEEG. For the advanced neuroscience research centers, EGI's dEEG systems and multimodal extensions provide a core technology that is common to otherwise incompatible assessments (MEG and MRI). With the capacity for extended monitoring, as well as MRI registration, EGI's technologies are providing new accuracy in assessment and treatment for the advanced clinical neuroscience facilities that are now developing in leading hospitals and medical centers.

EGI History

Founded in 1992, Electrical Geodesics Incorporated (EGI) set the goal of making dense array EEG (dEEG) practical and affordable for research laboratories. There are now over 350 EGI-supported research laboratories in 28 countries around the world. EGI systems have supported the research in over 400 publications in leading scientific and medical journals.

In the last several years, EGI extended dEEG technology to medical applications, where the precision of monitoring brain activity could lead to improved diagnosis and therapy for neurological disorders. EGI implemented a medical grade quality system, achieved regulatory certifications, and developed products to meet the requirements of medical use. Recently, EGI formed a clinical division, GeoMedica, in order to more carefully organize and manage the demands of a medical device company.

Separating the clinical division has allowed EGI’s research division to maintain the flexibility required by our research customers. This flexibility allows research customers to adapt new algorithms to their data analysis workflow and to freely exchange data and methods with colleagues. At the same time, the progress we have made with GeoMedica’s products, specifically for registering the dEEG data with MR images, has contributed advanced source analysis tools to our product line. These source analysis tools are now used by research customers in the same efficient, reliable laboratory workflow designed for clinical work.

In 2003, EGI scientists recognized that real advances in MR-constrained dEEG analysis would require corresponding advances in high-performance computation applied directly to neuroinformatics requirements. EGI’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Don Tucker, and Dr. Allen Malony of the University of Oregon Computer and Information Sciences Department, founded the UO Neuroinformatics Center (NIC). They obtained $1.1 million in funding from the National Science Foundation to build a supercomputer cluster. With additional funding from the Department of Defense Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center, NIC scientists have created high-performance computing workflows to allow high-resolution head modeling for dEEG and MR integration. To facilitate the commercialization of NIC technology, EGI and the University of Oregon created Cerebral Data Systems, which now serves as EGI’s neuroinformatics division.