Neuronet on board: how TPU, SSMU prepare break in medical technologies

TOMSK, Nov 27 – RIA Tomsk. Tomsk's first medical engineering school, held on November 24-25 in Polytechnic University and SEZ, brought together IT developers in medicine. How neuronets "draw" heart from the inside, is it possible "to bring together" exoskeleton and vestibular mechanism and where to take tens of millions for development – in material of RIA Tomsk.

The whole world moves to the fact that the medicine will become if not completely, but significantly automated. For example, surgeries will be done using robots, doctors will be able to monitor patients in the mode 24/7 by means of mobile applications … The future is brought closer including TPU and SSMU scientists: development of breakthrough medical technologies and decisions is conducted in each university.

"Our universities have positive history of cooperation. It is both joint network programs, and projects in the field of pharmacology and nuclear medicine. It makes sense to develop cooperation and in other directions. In particular, it is IT technologies, biochemical technologies and materials science in medicine", – the Deputy Vice-Rector for Research and Innovations of TPU Roman Ostvald told.

Heart in all details

Medical engineering schools are just that communication platform on which new collectives can be created, be born new projects on carrying out joint cross-disciplinary researches.

For example, the research associate of laboratory of design of medical products of the RASA Center on the basis of TPU Olga Gerget noted that her collective needs the regular help of doctors in the course of visualization of pictures of heart. The collective is engaged in the project of automatic segmentation of anatomical structures of heart on the basis of images of magnetic resonance imaging and a three-dimensional echocardiography.

If to explain in hand-waving terms, the scientists create the system which on the basis of pictures of MRI and echocardiography allows to construct exact model of heart of the specific patient in real time. It will help both when planning, and when performing the caridosurgical operations: it is possible to see the models cutaway and to study problem zones of body from within. Especially it is relevant for the beginning doctors, Olga Gerget says:

"During a surgery there are a lot of screens in front of a surgeon via which he traces the provision of a catheter. For an inexperienced person what is visible on screens is the world of penumbras... In addition, it is difficult to introduce a catheter with your own hands. We decided to develop joint system – a robotic complex which allows to automate process of delivery of tools in heart chambers".

The model received as a result of segmentation, localization and registration on 3D- scene, will serve for orientation of the robot in the patient's heart. This model will be built by means of neuronets, but it is necessary to gather big data array to train them. In other words – that nets "learned" in details how heart looks from the inside. The help of physicians is necessary for this purpose.

In addition, experts of SSMU can later join tests of the robotic platform first on heart phantoms (molded from silicone 3D models), then – pig hearts.

In turn, the chief of scientific directorate of SSMU Evgeny Kulikov suggested Gerget's group to work together over creation of models of integuments for patients with various dermatological problems. To think up system which can make the preliminary hematologic diagnosis by means of neural networks.

Teach me to walk again

There is a lot of tasks which physicians and engineers can solve together. For example, the head of the department of medical and biological cybernetics with a course of medical informatics of SSMU Konstantin Brazovsky told about work on the device for aftertreatment of patients with motive disturbances, which arise owing to craniocerebral injuries, strokes and other disorders.

Such patients have, as a rule, not injured muscles – motive zones of a cerebral cortex just don't work. To reestablish communication between the sites of a brain, which are responsible for the movement, and muscles, it is necessary that muscles worked, that is it is necessary to force a person to move.

The hardware and software system jointly developed by scientists of SSMU and TPU consists of glasses of the virtual reality and external auxiliary motive system – exoskeleton – with a special software.

A person puts on glasses of virtual reality and gets into a modified, artificially created environment, as in 3D-cinema. A disturbance is sent to the brain – for example, a person is standing exactly, and it seems to him that he loses balance. Due to external stimulation formation of new communications accelerates, and there is a restoration of the lost functions.

"There are several key problems over which it would be desirable to work together. For example, possibilities of exoskeletons to reproduce physiologically adequate movements are strongly limited. Characteristics of the movement of a person and technical systems don't correspond each other. How to combine them? Whether it is possible to make, for example, a certain analog of an artificial vestibular mechanism?" – Brazovsky told.

According to Roman Ostvald, in the long term it is planned to organize trainings on team building between two higher education institutions in Polytechnic University. And then – to provide support to new and already formed interdisciplinary teams, to advise them when writing joint scientific publications, to help to make applications for grants.

Millions for business

Now the IT subject in medicine is very demanded at venture investors, besides, there are many tools on involvement of public funds for researches. The head of department of the TPU scientific and technical programs Denis Kurtenkov told students of school that Tomsk Polytechnic University attracted more than half a billion rubles from implementation of programs and grants in 2016. These are 40% of the means earned by the university.

So, only according to the Federal target program on research and development scientists received 224 million rubles, grants of the Russian Science Foundation made 150 million rubles. Besides, we intend to hold an intra high school competition on financial support of interuniversity collectives  in TPU which will solve breakthrough problems together.