Patient-specific dynamical modeling and optimization of Deep Brain Stimulation

The project aims to enhance the outcome of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) in Parkinson’s disease (PD) through the individualization and optimization of stimulation settings.

Our vision is to replace the current practice of selecting stimulation pulse width, amplitude, and frequency by trial and error with a model-based patient-specific calculation.

This will be achieved by incorporating insights from novel clinical studies into individualized mathematical models underpinning clinically relevant DBS programming tools.

To reflect the cross-disciplinary nature of the DBS optimization problem, the consortium is composed of neurologists, electrical and control engineers, computer scientists, movement scientists, and neurosurgeons from four European countries.

The partners have complementing research competences and contribute to the project in-house software tools for the automatization of DBS programming.

Overall, DynaSti will acquire novel experimental data, extract new knowledge from it regarding the biologic mechanisms of DBS, and design open-source model-based algorithms to improve its effectiveness.

These algorithms will then be tested in the participating clinics for improved convergence to clinically optimal DBS parameters in terms of patient benefit, i.e. improved motor control, minimized side effects, and battery consumption.