Biography

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 Boylan returned to Cork in 2002.  Her research at King’s College 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. She has continued to develop this research in Cork and has recently been awarded a Science Foundation Ireland Principal Investigator Career development award.

Dr Boylan is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Medicine, UCC and co-ordinates Special Study modules and Undergraduate Research projects.

Research Interests

Much of Dr Boylan’s 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 base and discussion forum for clinicians, scientists and engineers engaged in neonatal research. 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

Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, St. Vincent's Hospital Dublin - Dr. Sean Connolly

We are funded by the Health Research Board, Science Foundation Ireland, Enterprise Ireland and the Wellcome Trust.

Post Doctoral Researchers –

Dr Stephen Faul, Department of Electrical Engineering, UCC

Dr. Cathryn O'Connor

Research Fellow

Dr. Louise Burgoyne, Department of Paediatrics & Child Health, UCC

Clinical Research Fellow

Dr. Yvonne Low, Department of Paediatrics & Child Health, UCC

PhD Students -  

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

Ms.Orla Doyle & Mr Eoin Thomas, Department of Electrical Engineering, UCC

JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS

Murray DM, Boylan GB, Ryan CA, Connolly S.  Early EEG Findings in Hypoxic-Ischaemic Encephalopathy Predict Outcomes at 2 Years.  Pediatrics. 2009 Aug 24. [Epub ahead of pring] PubMed PMID:19706569.

Korotchikova I, Connolly S, Ryan CA, Murray DM, Temko A, Greene BR, Boylan GB. EEG in the healthy term newborn within 12 hours of birth.  Clinic Neurophysiol. 2009, Jun;120(6):1046-53, Epub 2009 May 8. PubMed PMID: 19427811.

Murray DM, O'Riordan MN, Horgan R, Boylan G, Higgins JR, Ryan CA. Fetal Heart Patterns in Neonatal Hypoxic-Ischaemic Encephalopathy: Relationship with Early Cerebral Activity and Neurodevelopmental Outcome. Am J Perinatol. 2009  Sep; 26(8):605-12.Epub 2009 Apr 27. Apr 27.  PubMed PMID: 19399706.

Greene BR, Marnane WP, Lightbody G, Reilly RB, Boylan GB.  Classifier models and architectures for EEG based neonatal seizure detection.  Physiological Measurement 2008; 29,1157-1178.

Mahon P, Breene BR, Greene C, Boylan GB, Shorten GD.  Behaviour of spectral entropy, spectral edge frequency 90% and alpha and beta power parameters during low-dose propofol infusion. Br J Anaesth. 2008 Aug;101(2):213-21.

Greene BR, Faul S, Marnane WP, Lightbody G, Korotchikova I, Boylan GB.  A comparison of quantitative EEG features for neonatal seizure detection.  Clin Neurophysiol. 2008 Jun;119(6): 1248-61.

Murray DM, Boylan GB, Ali I, Ryan CA, Murphy BP, Connolly S. Defining the gap between electrographic seizure burden, clinical expression, and staff recognition of neonatal seizures. Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed. 2008 May; 93(3):F187-91.

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.2008 May;93(3):F183-6.

Mahon P, Kowalski RG, Fitzgerald AP, Lynch EM, Boylan GB, McNamara B, Shorten GD. Spectral Entropy as a Monitor of Depth of Propofol Induced Sedation.J Clin Monit Comput. 2008 Apr;22(2):87-93.

Faul S, Gregorcic G, Boylan G, Marnane W, Lightbody G, Connolly S.Gaussian process modeling of EEG for the detection of neonatal seizures.IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2007 Dec;54(12):2151-62.

Greene BR, Mahon P, McNamara B, Boylan GB, Shorten G. Automated estimation of sedation depth from the EEG. Conf Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2007;2007:3188- 3191.

Doyle OM, Greene BR, Murray DM, Marnane L, Lightbody G, Boylan GB. The effect of frequency band on quantitative EEG measures in neonates with hypoxic-Ischaemic Encephalopathy. Conf Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2007;2007:717-21.

Greene BR, Reilly RB, Boylan G, de Chazal P, Connolly S. Multi-channel EEG based neonatal seizure detection. Conf Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2006;1:4679-84.

Greene BR, de Chazal P, Boylan GB, Connolly S, Reilly RB. Electrocardiogram based neonatal seizure detection. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2007 Apr;54(4):673-82.

Greene BR, Boylan GB, Reilly RB, de Chazal P, Connolly S. Combination of EEG and ECG for improved automatic neonatal seizure detection.Clin Neurophysiol. 2007 Jun;118(6):1348-59. Epub 2007 Mar 29.

Rennie J, Boylan G.Treatment of neonatal seizures.Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed. 2007 Mar;92(2):F148-50.

Boylan GB & Rennie JM. Automated neonatal seizure detection.  Clinical Neurophysiology 2006; 117:1412-1413.

Greene BR, de Chazal P, Boylan GB, Reilly RB, O'Brien C, Connolly S. Heart and Respiration Rate Changes in the Neonate during Electroencephalographic Seizure. Med.Biol.Eng.Comput.2006,44:27-34.

Murray, DM, Boylan GB, Ryan CA, Connolly S. Early continuous EEG monitoring in acute near total intrauterine asphyzia. Pediatric Neurology 2006;35:52-56.

Murray DM, Ryan CA, Boylan GB, Fitzgerald T, Connolly S.  Prediction of seizures in asphyxiated neonates: correlation with continuous fideo-EEG monitoring. Pediatrics 2006;118:41-46.

Faul S, Boylan G, Connolly S, Marnane W, Lightbody G. An Evaluation of Automated Neonatal Seizure Detection Methods, Clinical Neurophysiology, Vol.116(7), pp1533-1541, July 2005.

Filan F, Boylan G 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.

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.

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.

Rennie JM, Boylan GB.  Neonatal seizures and their treatment. Curr Opin Neurol 2003; 16(2):177-181.

Books

JM Rennie & Boylan GB. Seizure disorders of the neonate. In Fetal and Neonatal Neurology and Neurosurgery (4^th Edition). Eds: Levene & Chervenak. Elsevier, London. In Press 2008

Boylan GB Principles of EEG and CFM. In Neonatal Cerebral Investigation Eds:  Rennie, Robertson and Hagmann. Cambridge University Press: Publish date: April 2008 

Boylan GB & Murray DM. The normal neonatal EEG in Neonatal Cerebral Investigation Eds:  Rennie, Robertson and Hagmann. Cambridge University Press: Publish date: April 2008 

Boylan GB. Neurophysiology of the Neonatal Period. In Neonatal and Paediatric Neurophysiology, Eds: Pressler R, Cooper R & Binnie CD. Elsevier, London, 2007 pgs 169-228