ABSTRACT
Technological advances allow for miniaturization of devices that were inconceivable just a decade ago. The advancement of integrated circuit fabrication combined with research on wireless powering strategies and biocompatible packaging advancements now allows for the development of portable devices to better manage disease state and even help with the treatment of several chronic disorders. The cardiac pacemaker is a classic example of the integration of medical science and engineering technology that is enhancing quality of life for millions of patients across the world. The application of cutting-edge engineering solutions for the treatment of epilepsy would lead to a signi–cant improvement in the quality of life of over 50 million epileptics all over the world (Begley et al. 1994). Epilepsy therapy today is predominantly pharmaceutical, with the exception of surgical resection in certain cases if the patient’s seizure focus is accurately identi–ed and meets a set of eligibility criteria. Alternate therapies mainly involving electrical stimulation have sparked recent interest, especially with successful seizure control sometimes achieved with the use of vagus-nerve stimulators (Labar et al. 1999). Deep brain stimulation and even direct stimulation of the epileptogenic focus have shown promising results from animal and some preliminary human studies (Graves and Fisher 2005). However, a majority of the devices employ continuous or periodic stimulation protocols (either intentionally or as a result of the challenges in implementing complex signalprocessing circuitry on a battery-powered platform) (Osorio et al. 2005; Peters et al. 2001; Lesser et al. 1999). Closed-loop studies that trigger stimulation upon detection or prediction of an upcoming seizure are few and not thoroughly documented (Osorio et al. 2001; Politsky et al. 2005). The experiments that validate this concept mostly employ bedside computers to implement the detection algorithms or use in vitro animal studies to evaluate the concept (Peters et al. 2001; Kossoff et al.
