The medical evaluation of patients with balance and equilibrium complaints includes an assessment of their vestibular function. However, standard clinical tests of vestibular function have a number of limitations that reduce their ability to provide an adequate assessment of vestibular function. The Computerized Impulsive Rotational Test (CIRT) has the potential to overcome limitations of standard clinical tests. The goal of this proposal is to develop and integrate this new rotation test on a commercial clinical rotation test system manufactured by Neuro Kinetics, Inc. Project Summary The goal of this Phase I SBIR proposal is to develop the additional hardware, analysis software, and clinical protocol necessary to adapt a currently commercially available clinical rotation test system, i.e., the Neuro Kinetics, Inc. (NKI) I-Portal(R) Neuro-Otologic Test Center (NOTC) system for performing this new test and validating results on a limited number of subjects and vestibular patients. The long-term aim of this project is to verify the clinical efficiency of CIRT and sell this test to idntify and characterize the severity of an asymmetry of vestibular function. The immediate goals of this Phase I SBIR are described by the two Specific Aims of this application.
The first aim i s to develop a clinical version of the CIRT: Incorporate stimulus delivery, data acquisition, and data analysis for an existing commercial rotational test system manufactured by Neuro Kinetics, Inc.
The second aim will compare the CIRT to conventional vestibular testing by performing tests on 10 subjects with normal vestibular function and 20 subjects with a verified vestibular loss of vestibular function. The tests will be performed in a clinical vestibular laboratory and will provie feedback that will be used to evaluate test comfort and to improve the user interface to the analysis software. The results from the clinical tests will be used to optimize the CIRT in advance of a Phase II SBIR test protocol.
The medical evaluation of patients with balance and equilibrium complaints includes an assessment of their vestibular function. However, standard clinical tests of vestibular function have a number of limitations that reduce their ability to provide an adequate assessment of vestibular function. The Computerized Impulsive Rotational Test (CIRT) has the potential to overcome limitations of standard clinical tests. The goal of this proposal is to develop and integrate this new rotation test on a commercial clinical rotation test system manufactured by Neuro Kinetics, Inc.
