Research Interests

Much of her more recent work is of an interdisciplinary nature and aims to create a synergy between Medicine and Engineering by using the skills and techniques of engineering signal processing research to address important medical problems such as automated seizure detection. She has recently established the Newborn Brain Research Group in Cork to provide a discussion forum for clinicians, scientists and engineers from UCC, the Tyndall Institute & UCD. The vision of this group is to promote the development of patient focussed solutions, based on interfacing physiological signal acquisition and digital signal processing. The research activity is required to be highly interdisciplinary and will provide the platform for interaction and collaboration between clinical, industrial and academic partners to achieve this vision for Biomedical signal processing at UCC.

Research Group

Department of Paediatrics & Child Health, UCC - Dr. Geraldine Boylan, Professor C. Anthony Ryan, Dr. Brendan Murphy, Dr Peter Filan.

Department of Electrical Engineering, UCC - Dr. Liam Marnane, Dr. Gordon Lightbody: http://eee.ucc.ie/staff/marnanel/DSP.html

Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, St. Vincent's Hospital Dublin - Dr. Sean ConnollySchool of Electrical, Electronic and Mechanical Engineering University College Dublin – Professor Richard Reilly http://ee.ucd.ie/mmsp

Post Doctoral Researchers –

Barry Greene, Department of Paediatrics & Child Health, UCC

Stephen Faul, Department of Electrical Engineering

PhD Students -  

Dr. Deirdre Murray, Dr Irina Korotchikova, Department of Paediatrics & Child Health, UCC

Orla Doyle & Eoin Thomas, Department of Electrical Engineering, UCC

Recent Publications

1. Murray DM, Boylan GB, Ali I, Ryan CA, Murphy BP, Connolly S. Clinical seizure expression in neonates: the tip of the iceberg. In Press, Archives of Disease in Childhood.
2. Stephen Faul, Gregor Gregor?i?, Geraldine Boylan, William Marnane, Gordon Lightbody and Sean Connolly. Gaussian Process Modelling of the EEG for Detection of Neonatal Seizures. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering In Press
3. Barry R. Greene, Geraldine B. Boylan, Richard B. Reilly, Philip de Chazal, Séan Connolly. Combination of EEG and ECG for Improved Automatic Neonatal Seizure Detection. Clinical Neurophysiology. In Press 2007
4. Murray DM, Boylan GB, Fitzgerald AP, Ryan CA, Murphy BP, Connolly S. Persistent lactic acidosis in neonatal hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy correlates with EEG grade and electrographic seizure burden. Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed. In Press 2007
5. Janet Rennie & Geraldine Boylan. Treatment of Neonatal Seizures, Archives of Disease in Childhood In Press 2007.  Barry R. Greene, Philip de Chazal, Geraldine B Boylan, Richard B. Reilly, Sean Connolly: ‘Electrocardiogram based Neonatal Seizure detection’ in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering In press, 2007. 
6. Boylan GB & Rennie JM: Automated neonatal Seizure detection in Clinical Neurophysiology 117, Jul 2006, pp.1412–1413. 
7. Murray DM, Ryan CA, Boylan GB, Fitzgerald T, Connolly S.: ‘Prediction of seizures in asphyxiated neonates: correlation with continuous video-EEG monitoring.’ in Pediatrics 118, Jul 2006, pp.41–46. 
8. Greene BR, de Chazal P, Boylan GB, Reilly RB, O'Brien C,Connolly S. Heart and respiration rate changes in the neonate during seizures. Med. Biol. Eng Comput, 2006, pp.27–34. 
9. Murray DM, Boylan GB, Ryan CA, Connolly S. Early continuous EEG monitoring in acute near total intrauterine asphyxia. Pediatric Neurology 2006; 35:52-56
10. Stephen Faul, Geraldine Boylan, Sean Connolly, William Marnane and Gordon Lightbody. An Evaluation of Automated Neonatal Seizure Detection Methods. Clinical Neurophysiology, vol. 116 (7), pp 1533-1541, July 2005
11. Filan F, Boylan GB, Chorley G, Davies A, Fox GF, Pressler R, Rennie JM. The relationship between the onset of electrographic seizure activity after birth and the time of cerebral injury in utero. BJOG 2005;112:504-507
12. Boylan GB, Rennie JM, Chorley G, Pressler RM, Fox GF, Farrer K et al. Second-line anticonvulsant treatment of neonatal seizures: a video-EEG monitoring study. Neurology 2004; 62(3):486-488.
13. Rennie JM, Chorley G, Boylan GB, Pressler R, Nguyen Y, Hooper R. Non-expert use of the cerebral function monitor for neonatal seizure detection. Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed 2004; 89(1):F37-F40.
14. Rennie JM, Boylan GB. Neonatal seizures and their treatment. Curr Opin Neurol 2003; 16(2):177-181.
15. Guerra MP, Wilson GA, Boylan GB, Rennie JM. An unusual presentation of fifth-day fits in the newborn. Pediatr Neurol 2002; 26(5):398-401.
16. Boylan GB, Rennie JM, Pressler RM, Wilson G, Morton M, Binnie CD. Phenobarbitone, neonatal seizures, and video-EEG. Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed 2002; 86(3):F165-F170.
17. Pressler RM, Boylan GB, Morton M, Binnie CD, Rennie JM. Early serial EEG in hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy. Clin Neurophysiol 2001; 112(1):31-37.
18. Kavvadia V, Greenough A, Boylan G, Dimitriou G, Laubscher B, Panerai RB et al. Effect of a high volume strategy high frequency oscillation on cerebral haemodynamics. Eur J Pediatr 2001; 160(2):140-141.
19. Boylan GB, Young K, Panerai RB, Rennie JM, Evans DH. Dynamic cerebral autoregulation in sick newborn infants. Pediatr Res 2000; 48(1):12-17.
20. Boylan GB, Pressler RM, Rennie JM, Morton M, Leow PL, Hughes R et al. Outcome of electroclinical, electrographic, and clinical seizures in the newborn infant. Dev Med Child Neurol 1999; 41(12):819-825.
21. Boylan GB, Panerai RB, Rennie JM, Evans DH, Rabe-Hesketh S, Binnie CD. Cerebral blood flow velocity during neonatal seizures. Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed 1999; 80(2):F105-F110.

 

Geraldine Boylan

A University of London graduate, Dr Boylan received an MSc in Physiology before  moving to King’s College Hospital London to undertake a PhD in Neonatal Neurophysiology – EEG and cerebral blood flow velocity in the sick newborn baby.  Dr Geraldine Boylan returned to Cork in 2002.  Her research at King’s concentrated on accurately diagnosing seizures or ‘fits’ in newborn babies by monitoring electrical brain activity. Seizures in this age group may represent serious underlying brain injury, caused by lack of oxygen around the time of birth. The accurate diagnosis of seizures in very sick newborn infants has proven to be very difficult. She has published the first studies of blood flow regulation in the brain during seizures in sick newborn babies undergoing intensive care. In the last 3 years, she has continued to develop this research in Cork and has also set up Ireland’s first 24-hour neurological monitoring service for newborn babies at risk of brain injury, located in Cork.