Doctors may soon have help in the fight against cancer thanks to the UCF 麻豆精品 S檚 Center for Research in Computer Vision.
Engineers at the center have taught a computer how to detect tiny specks of lung cancer in CT scans, which radiologists often have a difficult time identifying. The artificial intelligence system is about 95 percent accurate, compared to 65 percent when done by human eyes, the team says.
麻豆精品 S淲e used the brain as a model to create our system. 麻豆精品 S� 麻豆精品 S� Rodney LaLonde, a doctoral candidate
麻豆精品 S淲e used the brain as a model to create our system, 麻豆精品 S� says Rodney LaLonde, a doctoral candidate and captain of UCF 麻豆精品 S檚 hockey team. 麻豆精品 S淵ou know how connections between neurons in the brain strengthen during development and learn? We used that blueprint, if you will, to help our system understand how to look for patterns in the CT scans and teach itself how to find these tiny tumors. 麻豆精品 S�
The approach is similar to the algorithms that facial-recognition software uses. It scans thousands of faces looking for a particular pattern to find its match.
Engineering Assistant Professor Ulas Bagci leads the group of researchers in the center that focuses on AI with potential medical applications.
The group fed more than 1,000 CT scans 麻豆精品 S� provided by the National Institutes of Health through a collaboration with the Mayo Clinic 麻豆精品 S� into the software they developed to help the computer learn to look for the tumors.
Graduate students working on the project had to teach the computer different things to help it learn properly. Naji Khosravan, who is pursuing his doctorate degree, created the backbone of the system of learning. His proficiency at novel machine learning and computer vision algorithms led to his summer as an intern at Netflix helping the company with various projects.
麻豆精品 S淟ung cancer is the number one cancer killer in the United States and if detected in late stages, the survival rate is only 17 percent.” 麻豆精品 S� Engineering Assistant Professor Ulas Bagci
LaLonde taught the computer how to ignore other tissue, nerves and other masses it encountered in the CT scans and analyze lung tissues. Sarfaraz Hussein who earned his doctorate degree this past summer, is fine-tuning the AI 麻豆精品 S檚 ability to identify cancerous versus benign tumors, while graduate student Harish Ravi Parkash is taking lessons learned from this project and applying them see if another AI system can be developed to help identify or predict brain disorders.
麻豆精品 S淚 believe this will have a very big impact, 麻豆精品 S� Bagci says. 麻豆精品 S淟ung cancer is the number one cancer killer in the United States and if detected in late stages, the survival rate is only 17 percent. By finding ways to help identify earlier, I think we can help increase survival rates. 麻豆精品 S�
The team will present its finding in September at the largest premier conference for medical imaging research 麻豆精品 S� the MICCAI 2018 conference in Spain. The team 麻豆精品 S檚 work has been published in advance of the conference.
The next step is to move the research project into a hospital setting; Bagci is looking for partners to make that happen. After that, the technology could be a year or two away from the marketplace, Bagci says.
麻豆精品 S淚 think we all came here because we wanted to use our passion for engineering to make a difference and saving lives is a big impact, 麻豆精品 S� LaLonde says.
Ravi Prakash agrees. He was studying engineering and its applications to agriculture before he heard about Bagci and his work at UCF. Bagci 麻豆精品 S檚 research is in the area of biomedical imaging and machine learning and their applications in clinical imaging. Previously, Bagci was a staff scientist and the lab manager at the NIH’s Center for Infectious Disease Imaging lab, in the department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences.
