SCATMAN : Stroke CAvities Treatment Mechanism with Active Neural interfaces (SCATMAN)

Cerebrovascular accident (stroke) is the second leading cause of chronic disability and death. New
strokes affect 10.3 million people per year worldwide. The amount of stroke survivors is
increasing, but many remain with severe post-traumatic symptoms. Hence, stroke is a major
economic burden, with a cost of around 45 billion € in Europe in 2017 alone. Only 44% of this cost
is due to the initial treatment, the remaining 56% is related to the chronic care setting
(rehabilitation, nursing home, loss of productivity by the patient, etc.). Today, several treatments
are available in the acute (< 24 hours) and subacute phase, but there is no proven clinical therapy
yet for chronic (> 6 months) stroke patients.
A stroke may cause a large amount of brain neurons to die, creating an abnormal brain cavity
(aBC), often with an irregular shape. Surviving neurons near the aBC wall often show abnormal
hyper-excited behavior, resulting in the patient’s chronic post-stroke problems. Recently,
indications have been reported that such patients may benefit from neurostimulation at the aBC
wall (similar in concept to deep brain stimulators) as a treatment in this chronic phase. Since
state-of-the-art neural probes are way too stiff to cover the irregular aBC wall, this SCATMAN
project aims to create and show the feasibility of a novel class of neural recording and stimulation
systems. They have flexible active electrode arrays, are inserted endoscopically into the aBC, and
cover the aBC wall with a very high density of contacts, enabling the desired localized
stimulation/recording. The active arrays will contain a chip, allowing for the selection of the bestplaced
electrodes at any time, and for signal multiplexing, minimizing the wiring between the
implanted arrays and the control electronics outside the brain. Finally, due to a dedicated novel
encapsulation strategy, biocompatibility and hermeticity of the system are guaranteed, allowing
in-vivo usage over a long period of time.