Soterix Medical Inc., a Woodbridge-based company specializing in brain-monitoring technologies, was awarded a two-year, $910,000 fast-track grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.

The funding, which can be expanded to an additional $1.4 million for follow-on clinical trials, will be used to further develop a non-invasive treatment for depression.

The research is based on a personalized, parcel-guided repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) approach through cloud-based software, the company explained. Soterix said the grant follows promising clinical trials in patients with treatment-resistant depression at Columbia University.

Dennis Truong, Soterix scientist and principal investigator of the project, said in a statement that the goal is to “develop a software enabling clinicians to perform rTMS procedures for their patients with higher accuracy.”

“This novel technology may revolutionize the field of rTMS, with the potential to cure millions of people from debilitating depressive episodes, who would not otherwise recover,” Truong said. “Our ultimate goal is to develop an FDA [U.S. Food & Drug Administration] approved targeting algorithm for standard TMS-resistant Treatment resistant Depression.”

TMS over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is currently an FDA-approved treatment for depression but is only partially effective, Soterix said. The new rTMS approach targeting a specific parcel of the Human Connectome Project (HCP) atlas led to a 100% response in patients who were resistant to the standard treatment, the company explained.

If successful, the new treatment will be integrated into Soterix Medical’s FDA-cleared neuronavigation system.

R&D engineer Alex Guillen added that the new software could possibly be used for other neuropsychiatric conditions, as well.