Detailed images of the brain taken using new microchip
The human brain is an intricate network of tens of billions of cells. But when something goes wrong, it often takes expensive and invasive tools to get a window into what’s happening in the mind.
University of Calgary researchers say they’ve come up with a microchip with a specialized filter that can take diagnostic images of brain cells that are easier for physicians to use, less stressful for patients and cheaper for the health-care system.
“The filters we have built on this microchip are made out of a chewing-gum material,” said U of C neuroscientist and head of the cell biology and anatomy department Naweed Syed.
“You can paint it on to the chip and you need not have sophisticated microscopes or cameras and software.”
“The portability of this technique hopefully, in future, means you could take it into an operating room without having to deal with (MRI’s) where you can’t take all the surgical tools inside,” added Syed who helped test the device.
Findings to be published in this month’s IEEE Photonics Journal show U of C faculty of medicine and engineering researchers have created what they are calling a “lab-on-a-chip” that can take images of individual brain cells.
The biggest challenge was finding a way to ensure brain cells could function well with the microchip and its new filter, said U of C engineer Orly Yadid-pecht who helped design the new device.
This invention builds on a previous achievement by U of C teams, which invented a neurological microchip that communicates directly with brain cells.
“We’ve been continuously building and exploring means to record brain cell activity, so we could understand brain function better,” Syed said.
The new microchip and its special imaging filter unveiled Wednesday was tested on snail brain cells and will also be studied using rat brain cells.
Ultimately these neurological microchips — known as neurochips — could be used to help screen drugs for disorders such as Parkinson’s disease or epilepsy.
The hope is someday the microchips could also replace dead or damaged brain cells.
“If a brain cell dies, either due to stroke, trauma, injury, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease there is no current techniques available to regain lost brain function,” Syed said.
“We’re developing these neurochips or brain chips to be able to allow us to hopefully in the future implant these chips inside the brain to regain that lost brain function,” he added.