Twice a week, in laboratories in Little and Barrows halls, University of Maine graduate student researchers meet to pore over algorithms and clinical data.

They talk about the brain, sensors and signals, software and signature biomarkers, all in an effort to push for the next technological breakthroughs in monitoring and understanding the dynamics of sleep loss and neurological health in people – from newborns to elders.

The psychology students have backgrounds in clinical neuroscience and quantitative analysis; engineering students have backgrounds in communications and signal processing, and all work under the direction of professors Marie Hayes and Ali Abedi. The students’ work is part of research that has been ongoing for the past decade, and has contributed to development of a home-based sleep monitoring invention that is now one step closer to commercialization.

Ahmed Almaghasilah, a master’s degree student in electrical engineering, has been on the team for two years, developing algorithms from signal processing to identify such aspects as wake/sleep periods.

“I’ve enjoyed every moment, working side-by-side (with) psychology and engineering (students),” Almaghasilah said.

Ryan Dufour, an undergraduate from Glenburn pursuing dual degrees in electrical and computer engineering, described the interdisciplinary research as “incredibly enlightening.”

“Working with the psychologists helped provide context for my education,” said Dufour, who joined the team last year. “It let me see how the problem-solving skill set I have been taught fits when approaching real-world challenges.”

Interdisciplinary research at the University of Maine led to the founding of a spinoff company, Activas Diagnostics LLC.

Abedi, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, and UMaine assistant vice president for research, said “this is engineering informed by science. What makes this collaboration successful and long-lasting is, we are continually informing each other – two-way dialogue to improve design and testing.”

Leading research assessing the impact of sleep and cognitive decline in aging individuals, which ultimately resulted in high-level innovative funding, is a unique and exciting opportunity, said Katrina Daigle, who was the student team leader on the project before heading to Suffolk University for a Ph.D. in clinical psychology.

“Being part of a research team that developed the first sleep monitoring system of its kind and being the first to identify a specific set of sleep parameters associated with cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease was incredible.

“This type of cutting-edge research could not be conducted without an interdisciplinary team of talented individuals from neuroscience and engineering,” she said.

It’s an amazing team, tuned in to each other, said Hayes, professor of psychology and member of UMaine’s Graduate School of Biomedical Science and Engineering. “They get excited. I really like my work when this happens.”

In June, the home-based sleep monitoring invention that has the potential to detect early symptoms of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease in elders received a $1 million Small Business Innovation Research Award from the National Institute of Health’s Institute on Aging.

The two-year NIH Phase II award to Activas Diagnostics LLC, founded by Hayes and Abedi, focuses on bringing the spinoff company’s patented SleepMove product – a fitted mattress undersheet instrumented with 16 hybrid wireless sensors – to market as a new approach to diagnostics and monitoring in early stage neurological disease, including Alzheimer’s.

Activas Diagnostics’ SleepMove technology allows for home-based, non-intrusive recording of small movements. It integrates wireless sensing technology, signal processing and statistical inference software to identify two novel biomarkers of sleep disorder that complement standard actigraphy, and provide a new level of accuracy for outpatient sleep recording.

The funding project will focus on proof of concept – through clinical testing and device development to validate the SleepMove device’s predictive power – and an early-stage commercialization plan. The goal is to move the technology into clinical trials and establish approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to allow insurance coverage as a medical screening for hospital and home use.

The biotechnology innovation provides an assessment of respiratory signals and small sleep movements, including arousals, to evaluate mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Older people with MCI are at greater risk for developing Alzheimer’s, according to the National Institute on Aging. To date, biomarkers to help determine the severity of MCI, a recognized prodrome to dementias, remain elusive.

Hayes’ research program has shown that sleep-related movement arousals are deficient in individuals with underlying sleep debt from sleep disorders, a common prodrome in neurological disease. During sleep loss, sleep movements decline in vigor and there is no periodic increase in respiration, which may promote hypoxemia and apnea during sleep. Many persons with sleep loss from restriction, aging or brain injury can show this pattern, which is associated with memory loss.

Early detection of cognitive deterioration can help with prevention and treatment. The SleepMove technology has the potential to detect mild brain trauma and early onset of brain disease, as opposed to finding out with an MRI when it is too late. With earlier detection, treatment could start earlier to extend quality of life.

Activas Diagnostics, established in 2009 and based in the UpStart Center for Entrepreneurship in Orono, develops noninvasive wireless sensor system and software products for diagnostics of traumatic brain injury or neurological diseases, such as MCI.  Before the company started, NIH funding supported basic clinical studies on spontaneous movements during sleep and relation to brain injury.

The company started with funding from the Department of Defense, which is interested in the potential of the SleepMove technology to aid individuals with traumatic brain injury. Through the years, other funding sources have included NASA, Maine Economic Improvement Fund, the Maine Technology Institute and currently NIH SBIR Phase II funding from the National Institute on Aging.

Hayes and Abedi have been collaborating on the technology for almost 10 years.

Hayes’ longitudinal sleep research funded by NIH examined the role of high-frequency sleep movements in patients affected by neurological injury. It began with sleep studies in high-risk newborns affected by prematurity, pharmacological treatment for apnea, and opioid and alcohol exposures prenatally and consequences, such as neonatal abstinence syndrome.

Abedi’s wireless communications research ranges from coding and information theory to wireless sensor networks. In the NASA inflatable lunar habitat module on campus, Abedi and his team are developing wireless sensors for leak detection. In 2016, a prototype of the wireless leak detector technology was sent to the International Space Station, where astronauts installed it to send data to Abedi’s team for analysis.

Through the years of their collaborative research, Hayes and Abedi brought together UMaine undergraduate and graduate psychology, and electrical and computer engineering students, two postdoctoral researchers – Abouzar Ghavami and, now, Somayeh Khosroazad – and health care collaborators from the community. Among the overarching questions in their collaboration since 2010: How does the evolving innovation compare in performance to other single-point technology, and is it capable of detecting the difference between the signals from healthy and diseased brains?

Those students included engineering alumnus Timothy Falkner, whose preliminary findings from his master’s thesis research in 2010 demonstrated that the technology was capable of monitoring signals not easily detected in adults with mild traumatic brain injuries and PTSD.

The patent for a “system and method for early detection of mild traumatic brain injury” was issued in 2015, and the company is in the licensing agreement process.

The research that led to this technology has been presented at Wireless Sensor Systems Conference, June 2012 in the United Kingdom, the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, June 2014, and Traumatic Brain Injury Conference, April 2015 in Washington, D.C.

Most recently, the researchers were invited to present their research at the annual international meeting for sleep medicine, hosted by the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, this past June in Baltimore, and the Sleep and Circadian Rhythms Symposium of the International Psychogeriatric Association this past September.

“It’s extremely exciting to do space research, send a payload to the space station and find things in other galaxies,” Abedi said.

“This technology will help people on Earth, including those who went to fight for us. If we can use this technology to do something to help them get back (to normal/some quality of life), that’s the value.”

This story first appeared in the UMaine College of Engineering magazine. View here

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