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Research

Gastrointestinal Systems and Devices

We design novel non-invasive devices and use them to investigate gastrointestinal motility patterns.   Specifically, we develop electronics hardware modules and automated signal processing algorithms to monitor GI activity patterns, especially in the colon. Approximately 10-15 percent of the US population suffers from a GI disorder (e.g. Irritable Bowel Syndrome). We collaborate with the good folks at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute GI Systems group and recent spin-off company Alimetry   Our long term goal is to translate better diagnostics into better clinical care.

Comparison of  colonic activity defined by invasive high-resolution manometry (top) and non-invasive body surface colonic mapping (middle).  Temporal activity defined by HRM in the transverse and distal colon regions (bottom).  See the full paper at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54429-7

 

Intsy open-source, portable, multichannel bioamplier system. The system can record 32 or 64 channels. Data can be transmitted wirelessly (Bluetooth) or over USB for higher throughput. The system was designed especially for GI electrical recordings. Source files can be freely downloaded here. See the full paper here

 

 

 

Selected Publications (* denotes undergraduate student co-author):

  1. Seo SHB, Wells CI, Dickson T, Rowbotham D, Gharibans AA, Calder S, Bissett I, O’Grady G, and Erickson J. (2024) Validation of body surface colonic mapping (BSCM) against high resolution colonic manometry for evaluation of colonic motility. Sci Rep 14, 4842 [www]
  2. Erickson J, Stepanyan E*, Hassid E* (2023). Comparison of dry and wet electrodes for detecting gastrointestinal activity patterns from body surface electrical recordings. Annals of Biomedical Engineering, 51: 1310-1321. doi:  [www]
  3. Calder S, Cheng LK., Andrews CN., Paskaranandavadivel N, Waite S, Alighaleh S, Erickson J, Gharibans A., O’Grady G. and Du P. (2022). Validation of noninvasive body-surface gastric mapping for detecting gastric slow-wave spatiotemporal features by simultaneous serosal mapping in porcine. American Journal of Physiology-Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology, 323(4), pp.G295-G305. [www]
  4. Erickson J, Bruce L*, Taylor A*, Richman J*, Higgins C*, Wells C, O’Grady G. (2019). Electrocolonography: Non-invasive detection of colonic cyclic motor activity from multielectrode body surface recordings, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering; 67(6): 1629-1637. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2019.2941851  [www]
  5. Erickson J, Hayes J*, Bustamanate M*, Joshi R*, Rwagaju A*, Paskaranandavadivel N, Angeli TR. (2018); Intsy: a low-cost, open-source, wirelessly multi-channel bioamplifier system, Physiological Measurement; 39: 035008. doi: 10.1088/1361-6579/aaad51. [www]