BENGALURU: A dedicated laboratory to develop artificial intelligence tools and solutions to deal with cancer, cardiovascular and neurovascular diseases was inaugurated at the Indian Institute of Science on Wednesday.
Set up by Siemens Healthineers in collaboration with IISc, the Siemens Healthineers-Computational Data Sciences (CDS) Collaborative Laboratory for AI in Precision Medicine will work closely with neurologists, radiologists and Siemens Healthineers and integrate the developed computational models into their regular clinical workflow.
The company is set to invest Rs one crore through its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative for five years.
The CDS lab’s findings will be made into open-source AI-based tools to help the healthcare industry. The aim is to precisely automate the segmentation of pathological findings in neuroimaging data, which currently the industry knows very little about. Their clinical impact will also be mapped at a population level, said the stakeholders.
Dr Vaanathi Sundaresan from the Department of CDS at IISc will lead the programme. Around 20 PhD and MTech students, including six women pursuing fellowships, will be part of the programme. “The focus on neuroimaging is also timely, given the growing incidence of age-related disorders of the brain. We hope that this partnership will develop new tools for early diagnosis of a variety of neurological diseases,” Sundaresan said.
Govindan Rangarajan, Director, IISc, said, “The lab marks a crucial step forward in unlocking the potential of AI for precision medicine. This collaboration is a powerful example of how industry and academia can come together to tackle complex challenges.”
Dileep Mangsuli, Executive Director, Siemens Healthineers, said the three fields that the lab will focus on were chosen as the diseases are complex, and their detection and treatment are quite challenging today.
He added, “The datasets for the neuroimaging data will be trained through partnerships with hospitals.” The tools will be able to detect abnormalities through a pattern which are often missed by experts. Siemens will also then look at training doctors on the tools developed for their deployment.