Date of Award

6-2023

Degree Name

MS in Biomedical Engineering

Department/Program

Biomedical Engineering

College

College of Engineering

Advisor

Britta Berg-Johansen

Advisor Department

Biomedical Engineering

Advisor College

College of Engineering

Abstract

Chronic low back pain (cLBP) affects the quality of life of over 23% of American adults and places an immense burden on the economy.1–3 To more effectively diagnose and treat cLBP, quantitative biomarkers are needed to objectively measure pain and better identify the underlying mechanisms of cLBP. The overarching goal of this work is to create an analytical pipeline to investigate brain activity patterns measured with electroencephalogram (EEG) data of cLBP patients treated with transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation (tSCS). The specific aims of this project are to 1) investigate whether there is a difference between baseline EEG measurements and EEG measurements after transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation, 2) investigate potential brain activity patterns that may be associated with patient-reported pain scores, and 3) discuss the potential use of these brain activity patterns in wearable devices. Resting state EEG data was collected from four patients before and after completion of all tSCS therapy sessions, as well as before and after acute stimulation, for eyes open and eyes closed conditions. Patients underwent 12 or 21 tSCS sessions, with daily collection of patient-reported outcomes using a visual analog scale. EEG analysis has been done in MATLAB using the EEGLAB toolbox. A statistically significant (p

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