IIT Delhi campus (File Photo)Use of analytics, Big Data Analysis (BDA), pattern analysis have been buzzwords for a while now; but their use has been limited to business mostly. Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi have gone one step ahead and established the usefulness of these concepts in pathology. So much so, that a new neuromorphic system can detect diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, and cervical cancer etc within milliseconds.
The team headed by Manan Suri, principal investigator at the Neuromorphic and NVM research group has used nanotechnology to develop a diagnostic support system which can read raw data from blood samples, patterns of a patient etc and can extract information. “This process is generally performed by high-end pathologists or medical experts. The system can detect patterns and give accurate answers within milliseconds hence automating the entire system,” said Suri.
The healthcare system is compact and can work on low-power energy sources such as a mobile phone battery or a power bank.
“We used nanotechnology to curtail the size of the device. Since it is being used in healthcare, there is no need to connect data to the cloud or public storage instead of local and secure services are required in healthcare. All these purposes are solved with nanotechnology usage. It also helps one to use the device in rural areas where often high-end facilities are no available,” he said.
The team consists of student researchers, namely, Khushal Sethi, Narayani Bhatia, Vivek and Shridu Verma. These students were awarded two Summer Undergraduate Research Awards (SURA), by IIT Delhi, in 2017 and 2018 respectively.
The concept of applying neuromorphic engineering in other streams by the team has received Gandhian Young Technology Innovation Award (GYTI) in 2018. Some of the work based on this technology was also showcased at Rashtrapati Bhawan.
