PARESTHESIA-FREE SPINAL CORD STIMULATION OCCURRING AT LOWER FREQUENCIES INVOLVING PERCEPTION THRESHOLD DETERMINATIONS

Methods and systems for testing and treating spinal cord stimulation (SCS) patients are disclosed. Patients are eventually treated with sub-perception (paresthesia free) therapy. However, supra-perception stimulation is used during"sweet spot searching" during which a stimulation location in an electrode array is determined. Preferably, the supra-perception stimulation comprises a bipole formed using actively -driven symmetric biphasic waveforms at active ones of the electrodes in the array. After determining the location, a perception threshold for the bipole at the location is determined and stored, and an amplitude of the stimulation is reduced below the perception threshold to provide a sub-perception stimulation bipole. The determined perception threshold may be transmitted to the patient's remote controller, where it is used to limit amplitude adjustments to the sub-perception bipole by the patient.