Motion capture technology that brings characters from movies like Avatar to life is helping medical researchers trace the origins of diseases that affect movement in the human body.
Motion capture technology that brings characters to life in movies like Avatar is helping medical researchers trace the origins of diseases that affect movement in the human body. In many of these cases, the sooner the disease is diagnosed, the sooner the patient can be treated. This new system uses artificial intelligence to analyze body movements.
Dr. Ricotti was part of a group of researchers from Imperial College and University College London who spent 10 years developing the new technology.
During these experiments, British experts assessed the severity of two genetic diseases twice as fast as any of the best doctors. Using this technology could cut diagnostic time in half and dramatically reduce the cost of developing new drugs for clinical trials, the researchers say.
Dr. Valeria Ricotti, from the Great Ormond Street Institute of Children's Health, told BBC News she was "absolutely shocked by the results". It can have many benefits, from diagnosing diseases to developing new drugs for countless diseases.
They tested it in patients with Friedreich's ataxia (FA) and Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) in two separate studies. The researchers say it could also be used to monitor patients recovering from other diseases that affect patient mobility. These include the brain and nervous system, heart, lungs, muscles, bones, and various psychiatric disorders.
It can usually take years to detect the severity and possible progression of such diseases, as patients are usually required to undergo some standardized tests in the clinic to diagnose the disease and assess its progression. They are In your diagnosis, it is important to know what kind of help and treatment the patient needs.
Professor Aldo Faisal of Imperial College was one of the scientists who came up with the idea of using this technology. He said that this is a great achievement in the world of research.
He said this new method of ours detects the smallest physical movements that humans cannot normally feel or know. This technology has the potential to transform clinical trials and improve diagnosis and patient monitoring.
AF usually appears during puberty and affects one in 50,000 people, while DMD affects 20,000 children worldwide each year, mostly boys. There is currently no cure for either.
A team from Imperial College first tested the motion detection suit on patients with atrial fibrillation. They discovered that through artificial intelligence we can predict the deterioration or increase in the severity of the disease during a year. Although it is less than half the diagnosis time of any specialist doctor.
A separate team of experts in Great Ormond Street tested the technology on 21 children with DMD aged five to 18. He predicted how their movements would be affected in the next six months. And it was faster and more accurate than any expert doctor's diagnosis.
The researchers believe that their technology could be used to speed up clinical trials and reduce the cost of developing new drugs to test new drugs for a wide variety of diseases. It can be possible In particular, it may make it possible to test new drugs for very specific types of genetic diseases at low cost.
"We will be able to test more drugs at lower cost with fewer patients," said Professor Paula Gionti, Director of the UCL Ataxia Centre.
It takes at least 100 patients for about 18 months to get accurate statistics and meaningful results on the efficacy of a new drug in DMD. Doing this could potentially be done with 15 patients over six months.
Game changer.
Professor Richard Feste stein of the Medical Research Council's London Institute of Medical Sciences, who also helped develop the technology, told BBC News the cost of discovering new drugs in motion capture suit technology has the potential to transform the economy.
He said that this will attract the pharmaceutical industry to invest in rare diseases.
"Our research will benefit patients the most, as new treatments can be adopted very quickly through technology," he said.
The researchers are already seeking approval to use motion capture for drug trials for FA and DMD, which if successful could lead to drugs for the disease within two years. This. They are also collecting data to use this technology in Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and MS.
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