Neuro Kinetics: Monitoring the Eye to Diagnose Diseases and Conditions
There are well over 200 diseases with symptoms manifesting themselves in unusual eye movement. Neuro Kinetics Inc. (NKI) has developed highly specialized goggles, a futuristic-looking rotating chair and software to monitor and analyze these movements, providing an objective diagnosis that can save countless dollars and precious time.
“Our brain is a human CPU,” says Howison Schroeder, CEO of the Pittsburgh-based NKI. “There are eye neurons in virtually every part of the brain. If we stimulate a certain part of the brain, and it is unhealthy or giving off unhealthy signals, the eyes will show it.”
According to Schroeder, NKI technology has the potential to diagnose 200 or more diseases or conditions. Currently it can effectively diagnose 20 vestibular diseases and can generally classify another 30 conditions such as brain tumors, chronic dizziness, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s or impending stroke.
NKI recently received an Innovation Adoption Grant from BFTP, which will be used to help develop the company’s next generation goggles. The Innovation Adoption Grant program helps established manufacturing companies adopt new technologies as they develop new products and/or processes in order to remain competitive. The new goggles will help NKI penetrate into the primary care provider market, paving the way for tremendous growth.
Innovation: The Bridge between Past and Present
Benjamin Franklin realized the importance of allowing the eyes to focus at different points-both near and far-when he invented the bifocal lens in 1784. NKI uses this same principle with its technology.
“We track the center of the pupil. Once we know where the center is, we know where you are focusing. This is one way we measure precise eye movement,” Schroeder says.
The company’s system takes 150 images of the eye per second and reads the dynamic changes-up, right, left, down, on center and pupil change.
“We then compare this to eye movement in a normal state and are able to render a diagnosis,” says Schroeder. “We haven’t mapped out all the stimuli yet, but we are filling out the map. Like the periodic table, once the map is complete, everything else falls into place.”
The Importance of Early Diagnosis
NKI currently sells the technology to hospitals and specialized clinicians. “Our next step,” says Schroeder, “is a simpler, lower-cost test battery that can act as a much more ubiquitous early diagnostic tool. That way every primary care provider and eye doctor could run a simple battery of tests as part of an annual checkup to test for possible diseased states-such as a potential stroke or brain tumor-that might otherwise go undiagnosed until it was too late. The new goggles will be the key component.”
Multiple sclerosis was originally diagnosed by looking for abnormal eye movement. Today the primary means of diagnosis is by MRI. “However, an MRI can’t provide an MS diagnosis until the lesions are big enough,” says Schroeder. “Eye-movement observation can detect it much earlier.”
Schroeder also sees the NKI technology taking a lead role in keeping medical costs down by eliminating unnecessary diagnostic testing.
“My father was just hit with dizziness symptoms,” he says. “Two MRIs didn’t show anything, so they ordered a full neurological evaluation. We see long-term potential in our devices helping determine who needs to go for an MRI, to a neurologist or to a physical therapist. By comparison with current methods, it will be a very inexpensive way to get objective data.”
More Than Eye Candy
In December 2005, NKI unveiled the latest version of its software used to analyze and manage results of neuro-otologic testing. “It’s been very well received,” Schroeder says. “This acceptance is critical because in a clinician’s office hardware is less important than software.”
Five years from now, with the stimulus better mapped out, Schroeder believes the potential for NKI’s technology is phenomenal. “We have $8.5 million in potential sales in the pipeline without much sales and marketing. Frankly, we’ve done a great job of reinventing and innovating a technology. Now we have to keep innovating, secure the branding and be the first to lock down the intellectual property.”
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