New Stroke Technology to Identify Worst Cases Gets FDA Approval

The Lucid Robotic System is aimed at one of the central dilemmas of modern neurology: How to quickly identify patients with the most severe strokes who could benefit from being taken immediately to hospitals that can perform a complex clot-removal procedure, potentially helping to avoid major disability. The Lucid system, manufactured by Neural Analytics Inc. of Los Angeles, combines two technologies. One is a transcranial ultrasound, which shows whether a blood clot is blocking blood flow to the brain. The ultrasound, taken through a kind of natural window into the brain near a person's ear, is combined with the robotic part, which uses artificial intelligence to assess patients by instantaneously comparing them to thousands of earlier images of patients with severe strokes. "The goal is to have this in the ambulance soon," said Thomas G. Devlin, neurology chairman at the Erlanger Health System in Chattanooga.