Papers of the Week

Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is a widely accepted effective treatment for managing chronic pain. SCS outcomes depend highly on accurate placement of SCS electrodes at the appropriate spine level for a desired pain relief. Intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring (IONM) under general anesthesia provides an objective real-time mapping of the dorsal columns, and has been shown to be a safe and effective tool. IONM applies stimulation to multiple electrode contacts at various intensities and monitors the triggered electromyography (EMG) responses in several muscle groups simultaneously. Therefore, it requires dynamic communication between neurosurgeon and neurophysiologist and continuous real-time annotations of the responses, which makes the procedure complex and experience-based. Here, we describe an automated data visualization tool that generates patient specific activity maps using intraoperatively collected signals. Responses were collected using a High-resolution (HR)-SCS lead with 8 columns of electrodes spanning the dorsal columns. Our JavaScript/Python based graphical user interface (GUI) provides a fast and robust visualization of EMG activity via denoising, feature extraction, normalization, and overlaying of the activity maps on body images in selected colormaps. In contrast to reviewing series of EMG signals, our user-friendly tool provides a rapid and robust analysis of stimulation effects on various muscle groups and direct comparison across subjects and/or stimulation settings. Future work includes expanding analytics capabilities and operating room implementation as a real-time processing tool that can be used in conjunction with the current IONM techniques.