Motion capture technology used in films such as Avatar, at the service of medicine
The new artificial intelligence manages to diagnose disorders twice as fast as the best doctors, thanks to its ability to analyze body movements.
Dr. Valeria Ricotti, from the UK's Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, part of the team working on this new development, told the BBC "The impact on diagnosis and the development of new drugs for a wide range of diseases could be absolutely huge," which is a major advantage to date in the medical field.
This artificial intelligence system has been in development for 10 years and has been tested on patients with Friedreich's ataxia (FA) and Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) in two separate studies.
Professor Aldo Faisal of Imperial College, one of the scientists who envisioned the concept of the project, told the news network, "Our new approach detects subtle movements that humans cannot detect. It has the potential to transform clinical trials and improve diagnosis and patient follow-up," which would bring major benefits over the traditional diagnostic methods used until now.
The advantages are many, with advanced and rapid predictive abilities standing out as the main one. Among the studies carried out to test the tool, one study by a team at Imperial College tested the system on patients with AF, finding that it could predict the worsening of the disease in twelve months, more than half the time it would normally take a medical expert; and another study by a team at Great Ormond Street tested it on 21 children with DMD, which found that it could predict how their movement would be affected in six months, much more accurately than a doctor with current tools.
"The main beneficiaries of our research will be the patients, because the technology will be able to generate new treatments much more quickly," said Professor Richard Festenstein, of the London Institute of Medical Sciences at the Medical Research Council, which helped develop the new technology.
To date, there is no cure for AF or DMD, so early diagnosis is crucial for those suffering from debilitating genetic diseases for which no treatments are available to positively manage their illnesses.
The team is also collecting data for use in Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and MS.
Read more on the BBC website https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64326125
