BME.09 – Point-of-care Nerve Conduction Study Device and Application

• Mehreen Ali
• Bryan Lopez
• Alexandra Miekisz
• Erica Olavarria
• Ankit Singh

Nerve Conduction Studies (NCS) are a key clinical test that measures nerve conduction velocity (NCV) to assist clinicians in diagnosing various muscle and nerve afflictions. Many NCV testing devices are non-portable and do not allow physicians to conduct point-of-care testing, instead having the patient attend an outpatient facility to conduct testing. In cases where in-patient testing is necessary, the devices are very cumbersome to transport from the EMG lab to the patient’s bedside. Our device consists of three major components: an EMG sensor, a TENS unit, and a customized user interface. Utilizing electrical stimulation from the TENS unit, we stimulate the medial nerve to supramaximal stimulation and record a waveform utilizing the EMG sensor. Our user interface allows us to calculate NCV for both distal and proximal locations along the median nerve. We hope to utilize our device to conduct motor NCS, which involves the electrical stimulation of motor axons and measurement of the response from the innervated muscle. We hope that our device can accurately conduct NCV testing along the median nerve. To conduct verification testing, we will find the percent error from twelve readings taken by our device and the Natus Nicolet device (NCV gold-standard) on four patients, with each undergoing three trials. We will determine our device to be passing if it has a mean error of 18% or less in comparison to the Natus Nicolet. With a portable NCV testing device, physicians can conduct point-of-care testing, allowing them to evaluate nerve health almost instantly rather than subjecting the patient to the time-consuming process of outpatient testing.