Through the integration of knowledge between its faculties, research centers and health institutions, the Universidad Central “Marta Abreu” de Las Villas (UCLV) stands out for its contributions in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to safeguard human health.
The development of medical image and signal analysis systems, based on AI, have allowed health entities in Villa Clara and Cuba to already have the technology for the early diagnosis of diseases.
According to Rafael Bello Pérez, director of the UCLV Informatics Research Center, one of the fundamental lines that they are developing today as part of the nine projects that their three laboratories are taking on, is precisely the use of AI to increase the precision in the reading of medical images and to be able to replace old methodologies. Marlén Pérez Díaz, a professor at the Department of Automation at UCLV, told ACN that her research group already has three systems being tested in hospitals in Villa Clara: one at the Comandante Manuel Piti Fajardo Military Hospital for the early detection of Covid-19 using digital X-rays; another at the Radiology Department of the Arnaldo Milián Castro Provincial Hospital for the detection of lung nodules (precursor to lung cancer) and another at the Dr. Celestino Hernández Robau Oncology Hospital for the detection of breast masses. She added that this is not a technology that replaces the doctor, but rather serves as a support to alert about patterns that are not visible to the human eye.
He also reported that they have already begun to work with neuroimaging to help identify autistic disorder, based on functional magnetic resonance images and diffusion tensor images. For his part, Alberto Taboada Crispi, professor and principal researcher at the Laboratory of Processing and Analysis of Images and Signals at the Center for Computer Research at the Villa Clara university, explained that they are currently focusing on modalities that include x-rays, computed tomography images, magnetic resonance, ultrasound, and even more conventional ones, through cell microscopy; at the same time they process videos to extract information about breathing.
“We extract the noise from the images, that is, we clean the images, we process them, we obtain and then we classify the information; Depending on the use of these images or signals, they impact different areas of medicine and develop national and international projects with centers of great importance for health such as the Neurosciences Center of Cuba, the Hermanos Ameijeiras Clinical Surgical Hospital, and the Ernesto Che Gevara Cardiocenter of Villa Clara, to name just a few,” he explained.
For more than 20 years, the Universidad Central “Marta Abreu” de Las Villas has paid tribute to these branches of knowledge, through collaboration between its different faculties and the link with other scientific centers at the provincial, national and international level. More than 450 research projects, anchored in different business forms or the socioeconomic system of the territory, consolidate the UCLV as the most multidisciplinary in the country, with studies that respond directly to the main demands and needs of Cuban society.
Source: www.vanguardia.cu
Views: 0
