NEWSCOPE
Compiled by: Dr. Avantika Batish, working as the Director Strategy and Healthcare at International Health Emergency Learning and Preparedness. She is also a guest faculty for MBA (HR) and MBA Healthcare Management at various B-Schools and is a soft skills trainer.
RESEARCH
implants. Since they are smaller and can be implanted deeper into the human body than traditional ones available, neural dust can interfere directly with specific nerve clusters allowing more precise diagnostics and treatments. Iota’s devices can concurrently record information and stimulate nerves giving near instantaneous closed-loop therapies that could better treat diseases from the inside out. SOURCE: TimesNow
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cientists at University of California have created a wireless device called ‘WAND’ which works like a pacemaker for the brain and may aid in the treatment of disorders like epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease. Wand is a neurostimulator that can monitor and stimulate the brain with electric current. This device is autonomous and can simultaneously stimulate and record electrical signals in the brain.
ISSUES
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n American biotechnology Startup, Iota Biosciences founded in 2017 by Carmena and Michel Maharbiz has recently raised 15 million dollars for its inbody sensor which is smaller than sand grain. The University of California in a microelectrode research developed the sensors called ‘neural dust’ which then transfers the data wirelessly from inside the body. The Co-CEOs hold exclusive rights to neural dust technology which offers revolutionary therapeutic applications for various chronic health conditions from inflammation to motor disorders and eventually cognitive impairment. The advantage of this small-sized sensor is that it uses ultrasound avoiding any danger that is associated with wire and battery-provided
WAND... PACEMAKER FOR THE BRAIN
WELL-BEING
IOTA BIOSCIENCE CREATES BODY SENSOR SMALLER THAN SAND GRAIN
savvy clinicians. The software has important modules like automatic segmentation of lung boundary, retrieval of similar segments from the database with their report and assess the probability of the pathological segment to be a particular ILD category based on the data retrieved. The mapping of disease is performed by doctors based on the ILD pattern and clinical inputs. At present, the lung nodule detection rate and classification rate is 86% and 87%, respectively. The success rate for ILD classification is 84%. The researchers are working to further improve to conduct clinical trials on bigger sample sizes. The report has been published in more than 13 International Journals and 19 International Conferences in various stages of its development. SOURCE: www.inshorts.com
TRENDS
can also identify interstitial disease patterns in HRCT images showing the lung tissue texture. Another added benefit is that the reference point is Indiacentric, i.e. the medical image scan database used for reference is taken from the Indian patient population. Data has been taken from PGIMER Chandigarh; mainly biopsy cases and foreign database such as LIDC-IDRI and MedGIFT ILD have been used. The malignancy detecting tool detects a lung nodule, segment the nodule and provides a way to modify segmentation, retrieve similar nodules from the database with their report assess the chances of malignancy of the nodule in question based on the retrieval results. The ILD tool is developed by incorporating feedback from expert radiologists to make it easy to use for non-tech
THEME
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esearchers at the Department of Electronics and Electrical Communications, IIT Kharagpur have recently developed a decision support system to diagnose cancerous tumours and other diseased tissues in human lungs. While one system can refer to CT scan images to detect lung nodules and test them for the possibility of malignancy, the second software can detect interstitial lung disease patterns in chest HRCT images. The team has successfully tested both software systems at AIIMS, New Delhi with a success rate higher than 80%. The advantages of these newly developed systems include their use of non-invasive and comparatively affordable methods of image analysis that would aid the radiologists to identify malignancies by reading growth in the lung nodules. The system
PERSONA
IIT KHARAGPUR DEVELOPS DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS FOR INTERSTITIAL LUNG DISEASES AND LUNG CANCER
