A novel system for stereotactic functional neurosurgeries

The system presented here improves stereotactic implantations of deep brain stimulators of Parkinson's patients. The complete system consists of a planning software, a novel 32-channel probe , 32-channel data acquisition hardware (50 kHz and 16 bit data resolution for 32 channels) and software and a database serving as expert system support in the background. While preclinical studies of the complete system are pending, we present details about the probe and an analysis tool to support targeting based on functional recordings. This tool is called histogram flatness and is applied to interspike interval histograms, showing differences of activity within different brain regions, thus enabling automated targeting.