WIM no. 17 Spring 2020

מכון ויצמן למדע I magine a physician peering into a patient’s head —frommiles away—and diagnosing impending brain damage from an expanding blood clot, by simply glancing at a mobile device. That ability is close at hand, thanks to a collaboration between Prof. Alon Harmelin, Vice President for Administration and Finance; Dr. Slava Kalchenko, a senior staff scientist and Head of the In Vivo Optical Imaging Unit in the Department of Veterinary Resources.at the Institute; and Dr. Paul Wright, a neurologist with Nuvance Health hospital network in New York State and Connecticut. Prof. Harmelin and Dr. Kalchenko have developed an imaging system—called transcranial optical vascular assessment, or TOVA for short—that captures an image and data on the presence and growth of a subdural hematoma, a common type of bleeding within the skull on the outermost surface of the brain that frequently occurs after head injuries. TOVA comes in the form of a lightweight, wearable headgear connected wirelessly to a mobile device (such as a tablet or smart phone) for continuous, real-time monitoring via the cloud, along with a centralized monitoring system. TOVA will be readily portable and designed for continuous use. Patients will receive the wearable headgear when they are discharged from a hospital or urgent care center, rather than undergo extended hospitalization and exposure to the ionizing radiation received from CT scan monitoring (the current method for diagnosing hematoma and other brain injuries). In this way, TOVA would offer an immediate reduction in the costs for prolonged hospitalizations while providing superior monitoring in one’s own home. According to Prof. Harmelin, who developed the technology when he was head of the Department of Veterinary Resources, “TOVA will be a game-changer for how we treat head injuries.” Brain-saving technology New device combines algorithms, infrared light, and imaging to monitor bleeding in the brain g The TOVA chip Weizmann MAGAZINE Beyond the Bench