Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Campus Access Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering (MS)

Administrative Home Department

Department of Biomedical Engineering

Advisor 1

Chunxiu Yu

Advisor 2

Lan Zhang

Committee Member 1

Bruce Lee

Abstract

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder which affects movement and has no cure. Electrical stimulation to the brain, known as deep brain stimulation (DBS), is known to alleviate the symptoms of PD. Adaptive Deep Brain Stimulation (aDBS) uses an algorithm to generate electrical stimulation patterns with respect to the state of the patient to treat the motor symptoms of PD. A novel aDBS algorithm was created by training a reinforcement learning model in a biophysical model of parkinsonism. The reinforcement learning algorithm only takes in one biomarker from the model and determines an appropriate stimulation pattern from the collected data. The algorithms trained with an average frequency of 30 and 35 Hz were able to effectively reduce neural oscillations indicative of parkinsonism. The model trained with an average frequency of 35 Hz was able to be quantized, reducing the size of the model for eventual use in an implantable pulse generator (IPG). Quantization of the algorithm did not reduce the performance of the model. Applying a conventional stimulation pattern during training was found to increase the rate for the model to create an algorithm but did not increase the performance. These findings show that reinforcement learning can be used to create an adaptable and personalized stimulation pattern; furthermore, the algorithm can be quantized, reducing the size for eventual use in an IPG.

Available for download on Thursday, May 01, 2025

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