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The compositional analysis of materials of interest in various contexts obtained by a superconductor-based energy dispersive spectrometers (S-EDS) mounted on a scanning electron microscope is presented.

Fluorescein sodium (FL)-guided resection has become an important and beneficial treatment method for malignant brain tumors. FL-guided resection improves the rate of gross total resection in high-grade gliomas (HGG) and cerebral metastases (CM). FL sensitively visualizes the disruption of the blood-brain barrier in the area surrounding malignant lesions, similar to contrast-enhanced T1-weighted MR sequences. This review of the current literature summarizes the history of FL in neurosurgery from 1946 until today. We discuss the molecular mechanism of FL accumulation in cerebral malignant tumors and provide an overview of the current practice of using FL and applying a dedicated surgical microscope filter. Additionally, we outline and discuss ongoing trials and future projects.

The position of electrodes in electrical imaging and stimulation of the human brain is an important variable with vast influences on the precision in modeling approaches. Nevertheless, the exact position is obscured by many factors. 3-D Digitization devices can measure the distribution over the scalp surface but remain uncomfortable in application and often imprecise. We demonstrate a new approach that uses solely the impedance information between the electrodes to determine the geometric position. The algorithm involves multidimensional scaling to create a 3 dimensional space based on these impedances. The success is demonstrated in a simulation study. An average electrode position error of 1.67cm over all 6 subjects could be achieved.

Introduction: In the field of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI), the original two-class oddball paradigm has been extended to multiple stimuli with balanced probabilities and random presentation sequences. Exploiting the differences between standard and deviant ERP responses, these multi-class paradigms are suitable for communication and control., Methods: The present study investigates the effect of giving up the randomness of stimulation sequences in favor of a repeated, predictable pattern. Data of healthy subjects (n=10) who performed a single session with a 6-class spatial auditory ERP paradigm were analyzed offline. Their auditory evoked potentials (AEP) resulting from the potentially simpler task (using fixed sequences) are compared with the AEP evoked by pseudo-randomized stimulation sequences., Results: Class-discriminative EEG responses between target and non-target stimuli were observed for both conditions. The binary classification error estimated for standard epochs of was comparable for both conditions (random: 24%, fixed: 25%). Expanding the standard epochs to include pre-stimulus intervals, we found that the regular structure of the fixed sequence can be exploited. Compared to the standard epoch, the MSE improves by 7%, while in the random condition an improvement could not be observed.

Brain-computer interfaces based on event-related potentials face a trade-off between the speed and accuracy of the system, as both depend on the number of iterations. Increasing the number of iterations leads to a higher accuracy but reduces the speed of the system. This trade-off is generally dealt with by finding a fixed number of iterations that give a good result on the calibration data. We show here that this method is sub optimal and increases the performance significantly in only one out of five datasets. Several alternative methods have been described in literature, and we test the generalization of four of them. One method, called rank diff, significantly increased the performance over all datasets. These findings are important, as they show that 1) one should be cautious when reporting the potential performance of a BCI based on post-hoc offline performance curves and 2) simple methods are available that do boost performance.

P300-based Brain Computer Interfaces offer communication pathways which are independent of muscle activity. Mostly visual stimuli, e.g. blinking of different letters are used as a paradigm of interaction. Neural degenerative diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) also cause a decrease in sight, but the ability of hearing is usually unaffected. Therefore, the use of the auditory modality might be preferable. This work presents a multiclass BCI paradigm using two-dimensional auditory stimuli: cues are varying in pitch (high/medium/low) and location (left/middle/right). The resulting nine different classes are embedded in a predictive text system, enabling to spell a letter with a 9-class decision. Moreover, an unbalanced subtrial selection is investigated and compared to the well-established sequence-wise paradigm. Twelve healthy subjects participated in an online study to investigate these approaches.