Invention: Ultrasound to safely measure brain pressure
The invention of two devices for measuring intracranial pressure and blood flow by Lithuanian scientist Arminas Ragauskas enables fast and safe diagnosis of traumatic brain injury, strokes, glaucoma and brain tumours. Ragauskas' novel measuring devices are important tools for treating intracranial injuries, which are among the world's deadliest killers.
Quick response times are essential when diagnosing brain
injury, especially when a brain trauma or tumour elevates cranial pressure to potentially
lethal levels. Brought to market in 2015, two medical devices developed by Ragauskas
and a team of fellow Lithuanian scientists give neurologists and other doctors
precious extra time to detect and assess increased cranial pressure. They no
longer need to resort to costly and time-consuming invasive surgery, which
itself is not without risk.
Ragauskas - along with colleagues Gediminas Daubaris and Algis Dziugys from the Health Telematics Science Institute at Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania - achieved a breakthrough by applying the Doppler wavelength effect in order to arrive at an accurate reading of cranial pressure, using an ingeniously simple formula. The team's devices compute the pressure differential between the inside and the outside of the skull, based on a quick and simple reading obtained from a sensor placed on the patient's eye.
Societal benefit
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) and central nervous system tumours rank among the leading causes of death worldwide. TBI is behind 30% of all injury deaths in the US and around 140 people die from the consequences of TBI every day, according to the US Center for Disease Control. In Europe, roughly 2.5 million people suffer a TBI each year and some 75 000 die as a result (CENTER-TBI).
The invented devices help to detect increased cranial pressure quickly and reliably, which is key in responding to TBI and brain tumours. They are a major improvement over invasive surgery, for which patients have to be anaesthetised. Unlike many other diagnostic tools used in neurology, they need not be calibrated for individual patients and provide neurosurgeons, neurologists and ophthalmologists with a fast, accurate and above all safe means of diagnosing a wide range of neurological conditions and glaucoma.
Economic benefit
Marketed by the inventor's start-up company Vittamed as non-invasive intracranial pressure meter Vittamed 205 and non-invasive cerebral auto-regulation monitor Vittamed 505, the devices received CE marking approval in 2014. The company, which has its headquarters in Kaunas, Lithuania, and in Lexington, US, is currently launching the products in Europe, Australia and the US, and recently secured Series A financing to the tune of EUR 8.79 million (USD 10 million) from Xeraya Capital Labuan Ltd.
The robust and accurate devices are garnering attention on the global brain-monitoring market, which includes diagnostic devices for TBI, strokes and tumours. The global market was worth EUR 6.6 billion (USD 7.5 billion) in 2015 (MarketsandMarkets) and is set to increase at a projected compound annual growth rate of 7% to reach EUR 10.5 billion (USD 11.5 billion) by 2020.
