Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that causes several symptoms, including tremor, problems with gait and balance, slowness of movement, and rigid limbs. There is no cure, but new treatments are being developed that considerably improve the quality of life for patients with PD. One of these is deep brain stimulation (DBS), a treatment in which electrical leads are inserted into specific parts of the brain. Although this treatment has been very effective, there are still challenges with defining the parameters of the DBS leads so that they treat the individual symptoms of a specific patient.

Mojgan Goftari, a PhD student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, is working on a two-pronged project, “Developing Predictive Models for Optimizing Subject-Specific Deep Brain Stimulation for Treating Parkinsonian Gait,” to optimize the use of DBS. The first part will develop a patient-specific modeling approach that uses imaging data and behavioral data to determine the neural pathways that will affect Parkinsonian gait and posture problems. The second part of the project will develop an algorithm to optimize placement of DBS leads for maximum effect.

Some funding for this project was provided by a 2021 University of Minnesota Informatics Institute MnDRIVE PhD Graduate Assistantship. The UMII MnDRIVE Graduate Assistantship program supports UMN PhD candidates pursuing research at the intersection of informatics and any of the five MnDRIVE areas:

  • Robotics, Sensors and Advanced Manufacturing
  • Global Food Ventures
  • Advancing Industry, Conserving Our Environment
  • Discoveries and Treatments for Brain Conditions
  • Cancer Clinical Trials.

This project is part of the Discoveries and Treatments for Brain Conditions MnDRIVE area.

Research Computing partners:

  • University of Minnesota Informatics Institute (funding)

 

rows of CT scans of a brain