Sri Sarma has been named a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). She is among 171 engineers and researchers in this year’s class who were at an induction ceremony on Monday in Arlington, Virginia.
Epilepsy relief relies on research
With NIH support, biomedical engineer Sri Sarma develops neurotechnologies to improve understanding and treatment of epilepsy.
Johns Hopkins biomedical engineer Sri Sarma is developing new technologies to pinpoint the exact origin of seizures in the brain—life-changing work for the roughly 21 million epilepsy patients worldwide whose seizures aren’t relieved by medications.
Removing the specific brain region where seizures originate is the last resort when medication fails. But current clinical tools make precisely locating the epileptogenic zone (EZ) extremely difficult, rendering surgery effective in only about half the cases. With funding from the National Institutes of Health, Sarma and her team help surgeons determine if and where they should operate, improving the success rate of epilepsy surgeries.
New epilepsy tool could cut misdiagnoses by nearly 70% using routine EEGs
New epilepsy tool could cut misdiagnoses by nearly 70% using routine EEGs
Created by Johns Hopkins researchers, EpiScalp could significantly reduce false positives and spare patients from medication side effects, driving restrictions, and other quality-of-life challenges linked to misdiagnoses
Doctors could soon reduce epilepsy misdiagnoses by up to 70% using a new tool that turns routine electroencephalogram, or EEG, tests that appear normal into highly accurate epilepsy predictors, a Johns Hopkins University study has found.
By uncovering hidden epilepsy signatures in seemingly normal EEGs, the tool could significantly reduce false positives—seen in around 30% of cases globally—and spare patients from medication side effects, driving restrictions, and other quality-of-life challenges linked to misdiagnoses.
“Even when EEGs appear completely normal, our tool provides insights that make them actionable,” said Sridevi V. Sarma, a Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering professor who led the work. “We can get to the right diagnosis three times faster because patients often need multiple EEGs before abnormalities are detected, even if they have epilepsy. Accurate early diagnosis means a quicker path to effective treatment.”
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