CR&T: Care Research & Technology Centre
Current Project (2019-2028)
Research Team: Timothy Constandinou (UKDRI Group Leader, Bioelectronic Systems), Danilo Mandic (CSP Group, EEE Department), Adrien Rapeaux, Alan Bannon, Ziwei Chen, Charalambos Hadjipanayi, Maowen Yin, Niro Yogendran, Ghena Hammour, Amir Nassibi, Bryan Hsieh
Collaborators: David Sharp (CR&T Director), Payam Barnaghi, Ravi Vaidyanathan, Paul Freemont, Derk-Jan Dijk (Group Leaders, CR&T)
Funding: UK Dementia Research Institute (UKDRI) - Medical Research Council (MRC), Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK
About Care Research & Technology (CR&T)
The Care Research & Technology Centre is one of seven Centres that collectively make up the UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI). The Centre is based at Imperial College London and runs in collaboration with the University of Surrey and the Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (SABP).
Our Mission: We need to develop new ways to help people live well with dementia. We have an ageing population, limited resources for home care and no immediate cures available. All too often patients are isolated and develop preventable problems leading to unnecessary hospital admissions. New technologies hold great promise for providing solutions. We are working to focus the best minds on developing new ways of caring for people with dementia through advanced technologies.
Bioelectronic Systems for Intervention in Dementia
Our work focuses on integrating radar within the smart home infrastructure and deploys in PLWD homes to assess their health and well-being longitudinally. Our objective is to enable the observation of disease progression by providing new physiological and behavioural measurables unobtrusively at home, improving the assessment of therapeutic interventions such as pharmacological efficacy, and behavioural adjustments for sleep, and facilitating further research in dementia.
A second focus will extend our technology platform to include deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices that are routinely used in the treatment of motor symptoms in Parkinson’s disease (PD). By leveraging a strategic UK partnership, we will create the capability to observe brain physiology 24/7 through a next-generation DBS device integrated into the home. We will use this to explore how stimulation can be optimised across the circadian cycle to reduce daytime sleepiness and enhance vigilance whilst also maintaining the baseline therapy for motor symptoms. We expect that sensing brain activity using a networked implant will provide new insights into disease progression. Establishing this testbed in PD paves the way to then explore new bioelectronic interventions in neurodegeneration and dementia.
Publications
Publications
2024
- A. Bannon, M. Woollard, M. Ritchie, and T. G. Constandinou, “Magic mirrors: Active frequency-selective surface beacons for synchronization, communication, and identification in biomedical radar,” in IEEE Radar Conference, pp. 1–6, 2024.
2023
- K. Tossell, X. Yu, P. Giannos, B. A. Soto, M. Nollet, R. Yustos, G. Miracca, M. Vicente, A. Miao, B. Hsieh, Y. Ma, A. L. Vyssotski, T. Constandinou, N. P. Franks, and W. Wisden, “Somatostatin neurons in pre-frontal cortex initiate sleep-preparatory behavior and sleep via the preoptic and lateral hypothalamus,” Nature Neuroscience, 2023. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-023-01430-4
2022
- M. Zamora, R. Toth, F. Morgante, J. Ottaway, T. Gillbe, S. Martin, G. Lamb, T. Noone, M. Benjaber, Z. Nairac, D. Sehgal, T. G. Constandinou, J. Herron, T. Z. Aziz, I. Gillbe, A. L. Green, E. A. C. Pereira, and T. Denison, “Dyneumo mk-1: Design and pilot validation of an investigational motion-adaptive neurostimulator with integrated chronotherapy,” Experimental Neurology, vol. 351, p. 113977, 2022. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.expneurol.2022.113977
- T. Lauteslager, M. Tmmer, T. S. Lande, and T. G. Constandinou, “Dynamic microwave imaging of the cardiovascular system using ultra-wideband radar-on-chip devices,” IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, vol. 69, no. 9, pp. 2935–2946, 2022. doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/TBME.2022.3158251
2021
- E. C. Harding, W. Ba, R. Zahir, X. Yu, R. Yustos, B. Hsieh, L. Lignos, A. L. Vyssotski, F. T. Merkle, T. G. Constandinou, N. P. Franks, and W. Wisden, “Nitric oxide synthase neurons in the preoptic hypothalamus are NREM and REM sleep-active and lower body temperature,” Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 15, p. 1323, 2021. doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2021.709825
- A. Bannon, A. Rapeaux, and T. G. Constandinou, “Tiresias: A low-cost networked UWB radar system for in-home monitoring of dementia patients,” in 2021 43rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC), IEEE, 2021. doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC46164.2021.9630533
- Z. Chen, A. Bannon, A. Rapeaux, and T. G. Constandinou, “Towards robust, unobtrusive sensing of respiration using ultra-wideband impulse radar for the care of people living with dementia,” in IEEE/EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering, 2021. doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/NER49283.2021.9441392
2020
- R. Toth, M. Zamora, J. Ottaway, T. Gillbe, S. Martin, M. Benjaber, G. Lamb, T. Noone, B. Taylor, A. Deli, V. Kremen, G. Worrell, T. G. Constandinou, I. Gillbe, S. De Wachter, C. Knowles, A. Sharott, A. Valentin, A. L. Green, and T. Denison, “DyNeuMo Mk-2: A circadian-locked neuromodulator with responsive stimulation for applied chronobiology,” in Proc. IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC), 2020. doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/SMC42975.2020.9283187
2019
- B. Hsieh, E. C. Harding, W. Wisden, N. P. Franks, and T. G. Constandinou, “A miniature neural recording device to investigate sleep and temperature regulation in mice,” in IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems (BioCAS) Conference, 2019. doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/BIOCAS.2019.8918756
- Y. Han, T. Lauteslager, T. S. Lande, and T. G. Constandinou, “UWB radar for non-contact heart rate variability monitoring and mental state classification,” in 41st International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), pp. 6578–6582, 2019. doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC.2019.8856920
- T. Lauteslager, M. Tømmer, T. S. Lande, and T. G. Constandinou, “Coherent UWB radar-on-chip for in-body measurement of cardiovascular dynamics,” IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 814–824, 2019. doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/TBCAS.2019.2922775