<![CDATA[Hes-So]]>enAiO RSS generatorhttps://www.hevs.ch/_nuxt/img/logo_hesso.4161a9a.svg<![CDATA[Hes-So]]>20440<![CDATA[Institute of Informatics: two ambitious projects funded by the highly selective NSF]]>https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/institute-of-informatics-two-ambitious-projects-funded-by-the-highly-selective-nsf-208196The Swiss National Science Foundation is very selective in funding research at Swiss universities. The Institute of Informatics of the HES-SO Valais-Wallis is proud to see two of its projects funded by the SNSF. Antoine Widmer and Henning Müller, professors at the Management School and researchers at the institute, are launching two new projects in the field of eHealth thanks to this funding. A brief overview of what computer technology can do for children with autism spectrum disorders or new tools for lung cancer detection.

Antoine Widmer wants to refine ASD detection with immersive technologies

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) affect more than 2% of children born in Switzerland. Currently, the detection of ASD is faced with a gender bias, with a tendency towards under-diagnosis in girls, whose symptoms are often less apparent or different from those of boys. This bias is reinforced by detection criteria traditionally centred on male studies and by gender-specific societal expectations, which often lead to delayed diagnosis for girls. This topical issue has been the subject of many radio and TV programmes: 36.9° autism in women, Vacarme Diagnosing the invisible and Dingue ASD beyond clichés.

Interdisciplinary research at the HES-SO Valais-Wallis

To support clinicians in their work, Professors Antoine Widmer of the Institute of Informatics, Sarah Dini of the Institute of Social Work and Paul Matusz of the Institute of Health are collaborating in an institutional project involving three universities. This interdisciplinary project combines child neuroscience, social work and computer science, all of which are present at the HES-SO Valais-Wallis. Professor Widmer is continuing his research work in the field of health, having already worked on Innosuisse projects, particularly with people in need of integration or with health problems, as well as with seniors for immersive therapies at home. Co-constructed with partners in the field in Valais (Clinique dis7, association Eliézer), the project will improve the phenotyping of ASD, particularly in terms of co-morbidity or detection in girls.

How can the detection of ASD be improved?

To address these challenges, this research project led by the Institute of Informatics aims to refine the detection of ASD using computer vision, artificial intelligence (AI) and mixed reality. By combining motion analysis and ophthalmometry with AI algorithms, this project aims to identify the signs of ASD with greater accuracy. A key feature of this project is the use of mixed reality video games that create an immersive and interactive environment for accurate assessment of children’s movements and emotions. This approach combines the benefits of AI, computer vision and mixed reality to provide more balanced, gender-sensitive and individual-specific ASD detection.

Henning Müller, a partnership with the Valais Hospital

Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in the whole Valais population. The teams of Professor Henning Müller from the Institute of Informatics of the HES-SO Valais-Wallis are specialised in the field of eHealth and have been working for a long time on cancer detection using algorithms. This area of research is particularly important in view of the increasing digitisation of detection systems in hospitals. With the capacity to process vast amounts of data, medical informatics can improve patient management and help practitioners make treatment decisions.

Valais Hospital, one of the most important histopathology centres in Switzerland

The histopathology department of the Hôpital du Valais is one of the largest in Switzerland. Each year, it produces 400,000 slides containing tissues observed on a microscopic scale by clinicians and has begun its digital transformation. The Institute of Informatics of the HES-SO Valais-Wallis is a partner of the hospital, particularly in the digitalisation of its services. Equipped with an image visualisation system, the hospital wishes to develop computer extensions to provide decision-making support for health professionals. Professor Müller’s team is developing an algorithm for detecting lung cancers and classifying and quantifying their subtypes. This detection is invaluable in estimating the aggressiveness of cancer and helping clinicians select the most appropriate treatment option from the existing arsenal.

Open science or how to adapt past research for future applications

It is also planned to develop new computer extensions for this visualisation system and to use tools already developed at the Institute of Informatics to adapt them. The desire of the Valais Hospital to open to research will benefit patients and the scientific community. The data used so far by Professor Müller’s teams were public and it will be interesting to compare them with local data. Co-constructed with the hospital staff, these extensions can be improved with their feedback. The main objectives will be to find out whether the tools are working properly, whether they are saving time, whether they are improving the quality of diagnosis, and whether the level of confidence and satisfaction of health care teams has increased.

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Wed, 13 Dec 2023 11:01:08 +0100https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/institute-of-informatics-two-ambitious-projects-funded-by-the-highly-selective-nsf-208196
<![CDATA[Autonomous vehicles, a story of human skills]]>https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/autonomous-vehicles-a-story-of-human-skills-208043Do you remember the autonomous vehicles that travelled around the city of Sion between 2016 and 2018? These driverless shuttles have been tested around the world, and the results in terms of technology have been extensively studied. As for the human factor, i.e., operators and technicians, it has been poorly documented. To remedy this, Jakub Mlynar, a research associate at the Institute of Informatics of the HES-SO Valais Wallis, has secured a very ambitious Spark grant from the Swiss National Research Foundation. Working in the Human-Centered Computing Group, he is interested in human-machine interactions. At a time when questions are being asked about the replacement of humans by artificial intelligence, this type of research seems essential.

Beyond technology: life skills and social skills

Automated vehicles have been hailed as a technology with the potential to bring about profound changes in transport and the organisation of urban life. Between 2016 and 2022, according to the Federal Roads Office, ten pilot tests of autonomous vehicles for public transport were carried out in Switzerland. Although the pilot tests yield very useful results, reports and publications usually provide little detail on the practical knowledge and skills developed by the professional participants. Indeed, the operators and technicians who carried out the tests on the street solved technical and social problems and guided passengers and others on the public highway in their interactions with shuttles.

The Spark project seeks to fill the identified gaps and explore the details of these informal knowledge and skills. Moving from an implicit resource to an explicit subject, this knowledge will be obtained retrospectively from former participants in autonomous vehicle trials. By collecting the “oral histories” of these trials, the aim is to explore the social implications of automated mobility and AI by understanding how former participants account for the organisation of the pilot trials and their own involvement in the trials.

Memory as a source of knowledge

Thanks to numerous video recordings made during the tests, the social interactions between the operators and the passengers are documented. These recordings also show that the independence of vehicles is quite relative, since the operators do a great deal of work to explain clearly to the users how the vehicles work. Interviews with the technical teams, engineers and operators will be scheduled to compile the practical and social knowledge gained during the tests carried out a few years ago. Their memory will be revived by viewing excerpts from the recordings, and their experience will enrich the social history of the technologies in order, for example, to compare the progress made. This innovative methodology, which draws on experiences of five years or more, allows us to approach the research question from a reflective and narrative point of view. The purpose of this oral history is to analyze the past and understand how that experience shaped the present identity and relationship to technologies of the interviewees. Spark funds are intended for less conventional and riskier projects. Reflecting on the present implications of past interactions between humans and machines allows us to imagine how we can do better in the future. Indeed, the name chosen for this project is Remembering the Future.

Formalize knowledge and support operators in learning.

The aim of this research project is not technological, but human and social. It is a question of safeguarding field knowledge before it is forgotten, making it explicit and available to all stakeholders. It will be a question of understanding how these autonomous vehicle tests are conducted by operators in terms of work routines. “Insider knowledge” has been acquired by humans throughout the trial but has certainly not been included in the official reports. Understanding how this knowledge has been developed and transformed, and how it has been passed on and taught to the new recruits for the trials is crucial. This will help formalize knowledge that could benefit others. Thanks in particular to the SAAM (Swiss Association for Autonomous Mobility) network and the public transport operators Bernmobil and PostAuto, among others, the results will be disseminated and used.

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Wed, 29 Nov 2023 08:55:23 +0100https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/autonomous-vehicles-a-story-of-human-skills-208043
<link>https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/-208044</link><description/><enclosure url="https://www.hevs.ch/media/image/3/normal/tomates_508x3391.jpg" type="image/jpg"/><pubDate>Wed, 29 Nov 2023 15:09:43 +0100</pubDate><gid>https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/-208044</gid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Sense : newsletter #02]]>https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/the-sense--newsletter-02-207752

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Mon, 16 Oct 2023 16:40:47 +0200https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/the-sense--newsletter-02-207752
<![CDATA[When algorithms read medical images]]>https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/when-algorithms-read-medical-images-207665AI in medicine: danger or opportunity? The heated debates surrounding artificial intelligence, which can replace workers, should also shed light on its advantages, particularly in terms of healthcare and personalized medicine. Certain tasks that are too time-consuming and human-intensive to be financially viable can be delegated to algorithms. This is particularly true in the field of precision medicine, based on images acquired during clinical examinations. In fact, these images, intended for a specific purpose, are also used to train self-learning computer models, which require large quantities of data. They reveal the diversity of human organisms and the pathologies that affect patients.

CT scanners: when the technology that heals radiates into the body.

The research work of Professor Adrien Depeursinge's team has focused on images taken from CT (computed tomography) scanners. If repeated too often, this type of medical imaging poses a danger to patients, whose bodies absorb X-rays and thus a dose of radiation with carcinogenic potential. What's more, the images produced vary according to the scanner used and the type of settings requested by the radiologist. The images analyzed are therefore heterogeneous, which complicates the task of the algorithmic learning model. The "TCIA data QA4IQI" (Quality assessment for interoperable quantitative CT-Imaging) project aims to measure and isolate these variations in images, to make them homogeneous and erase differences generated by acquisition protocol, quality, radiologist preferences or software updates.

To safeguard patients' health, the team of researchers at the Institute of Informatics of the HES-SO Valais-Wallis collaborated with start-up PhantomX, which produced a 3D physical object. This realistic reproduction of a human body, or phantom, is used to calibrate the scanner and check variations produced by the machine according to settings or the X-ray dose chosen. The phantom has the advantage of remaining immobile, unaffected by radiation and able to move rapidly around different hospitals. Radiologists can thus check the variability of scanner images and harmonize them to improve readability.

SPHN funds personalized medicine research and promotes inter-institutional exchanges.

This research project, funded by the SPHN (Swiss Personalized Health Network), is being carried out in collaboration with Professor Bram Stieltjes of Basel University Hospital, Professor Ender Konukoglu of ETH Zurich, and Professor Henning Müller of the Institute of Informatics. The image acquisition and imaging physics skills of the Basel hospital and the computer vision expertise of ETH enabled the Institute of Informatics’ team to create the 3D phantom, select the relevant images, test the synthetic regions to be analyzed, check the stability of the model, and select, evaluate, and put online a dataset for the entire scientific community. Assessing the quality of quantitative, interoperable imaging is a cornerstone of personalized medicine, which is why the SPHN has supported this project. It is even more interesting that the results obtained are now being made available to the global scientific community.

Improving patient health and advancing research through open science.

The research institutes of the HES-SO Valais-Wallis are particularly keen to make scientific research accessible to all through Open Science. This way of doing research and disseminating its results enables openness, collaboration, and transparency, so that research can move forward more quickly and efficiently. Sharing data in this way required a great deal of effort on the part of Roger Schaer, scientific collaborator, and Oscar Jimenez Del Toro, former scientific collaborator at the Institute of Informatics, who spent hundreds of hours sorting, formatting, and labeling complex data; however, this is particularly important in the field of eHealth, as these technological advances directly benefit people whose health is affected. The interest shown by the scientific community when this dataset was put online, and during the summer university in which Professor Depeursinge took part, was evident.

Freeing up doctors' time to focus on patients.

The SPHN funding aims to harmonize Swiss personalized medicine practices, and the effort to standardize the CT scanner images processed by this research project will enable to verify the robustness of the artificial intelligence models already in use in hospitals. Using medical informatics developed at the Swiss Digital Center in Sierre, the possibility of reducing the radiation dose while maintaining scanner image legibility is being studied. Further research should ascertain whether algorithmic reading could make radiologists' work more robust, helping them to make the necessary medical decisions and, above all, freeing up precious time for patient relations.


Scientific publication: Jimenez-del-Toro, Oscar MD, PhD∗; Aberle, Christoph PhD†; Bach, Michael MD†; Schaer, Roger BSc∗; Obmann, Markus M. MD†; Flouris, Kyriakos PhD‡; Konukoglu, Ender PhD‡; Stieltjes, Bram MD, PhD†; Müller, Henning PhD∗,§; Depeursinge, Adrien PhD∗,∥. The Discriminative Power and Stability of Radiomics Features with Computed Tomography Variations: Task-Based Analysis in an Anthropomorphic 3D-Printed CT Phantom. Investigative Radiology 56(12):p 820-825, December 2021. | DOI: 10.1097/RLI.0000000000000795, https://journals.lww.com/investigativeradiology/toc/2021/12000

Dataset: Task-Based Anthropomorphic CT Phantom for Radiomics Stability and Discriminatory Power Analyses (CT-Phantom4Radiomics), Images & Segmentations (DICOM, 42.5 GB), https://wiki.cancerimagingarchive.net/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=140312704

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Wed, 04 Oct 2023 13:25:01 +0200https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/when-algorithms-read-medical-images-207665
<![CDATA[2023 projects funded by The Sense]]>https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/2023-projects-funded-by-the-sense-207266The Sense is pleased to announce the four new projects that are internally funded for 2023. A notable aspect is that these interinstitutional projects are coordinated by researchers who did not receive funding last year. Among other things, three of these projects are coordinated by women.

Here are the four supported projects for this year:

1. Flavor

Developing EEG-based tools to understand flavour perception in response to sustainable food technologies.

Sandra Galle (HES-SO Valais-Wallis) et Chrysa Retsa (CHUV-UNIL)

We will develop a method that allows to measure and quantify cognitive response of dynamic flavor stimuli in a plant-based model system and correlate it with state-of-the-art flavor and sensory analysis. This tool would allow to generate an information matrix that enables new models to predict flavor perception as a function of flavor release, a powerful conclusion for product developers.

2. KiCk fMRI

Validating innovations to broaden the testable age-range for fMRI investigations in children.

Benedetta Franceschiello (HES-SO Valais-Wallis) et Juliane Schneider (CHUV-UNIL)

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is a non-invasive technique, which permits recording correlates of neural activity while participants perform behavioral tasks or during rest. However, fMRI is prone to motion artefacts.In normal behaving subjects this is rarely the case, as participants can be instructed to remain still. Kids are a particularly sensitive population, as they are more difficult to instruct and more prone to perform involuntary movements. In this project we develop a new technique, Ki-Ck fMRI, capable of reliably measuring fMRI in kids and successfully correcting for artefacts, providing an unprecedent advancement in the field.

3. MVO

Introducing virtual reality platforms to enable movement in patients with chronic lower back pain.

Antoine Widmer (HES-SO Valais-Wallis), Julien Favre (CHUV-UNIL) et Chantal Berna Renella (CHUV-UNIL)

MVO will explore how fear of performing specific movements impacts the way people suffering from lower back pain moves in specific situations. Virtual Reality will be used to induce sense of fear without the potential risk of getting hurt.

4. Wildcomm

Translating lab-based paradigms and hardware into field sites to understand multisensory communication.

Erica Van de Waal (UNIL) et Olivier Collignon (HES-SO Valais-Wallis)

“WildCom” will explore the appealing idea that the combinations of gestures and vocalizations were crucial in the emergence of the unique language abilities in humans. This question will be addressed by adapting experiments usually performed on humans in the lab directly for wild monkeys in their natural habitat.

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Thu, 31 Aug 2023 08:25:16 +0200https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/2023-projects-funded-by-the-sense-207266
<![CDATA[Axe Santé: SORTIE, how virtual reality can save lives]]>https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/axe-sante-sortie-how-virtual-reality-can-save-lives-207244The Axe Santé is an interdisciplinary center for the development of sustainable healthcare technologies that brings together all the research institutes of the HES-SO Valais Wallis. We caught up with Davide Calvaresi, Scientific Assistant at the Institute of Informatics, to talk about the project he has been working on for several months: SORTIE, which simulates the exit from a building in the event of a disaster or incident.

Helping people with reduced mobility or in fragile situations

Davide Calvaresi confides that he grew up not far from his grandparents, and that he was struck by the many difficulties encountered by elderly, physically or cognitively frail people in their day-to-day activities. That's why he decided to put his IT skills to good use in the healthcare sector. In fact, his Master’s thesis focused on technologies capable of supporting the elderly in the last years of their lives. So, it's hardly surprising that he's now working at the AIS-Lab (Applied Intelligent Systems Lab) in the field of eHealth.

SORTIE: improving infrastructures and warning systems in the event of danger

SORTIE, the project supported by the Axe Santé and currently being run by the Institute of Informatics, uses virtual reality goggles to simulate a dangerous situation in a building: fire, flood, earthquake... Would we be able to get out of the building safely by following the evacuation signals? This was the question that occupied researchers at the Institute, accompanied by colleagues from the Living Lab Handicap, Emmanuel Fragnière and Benjamin Nanchen. Thanks to plans drawn up by building engineer Emanuele Gagliardi, which reflect real-life standards in terms of distance from objects, size of spaces and room brightness, the team was able to set up a full-scale simulation to test the behavior of a person with or without a disability in an existing structure or one under construction.

Virtual immersion in a disaster-stricken hospital

Two hospitals took part in the project: an American hospital and the future health center of the Hôpital du Valais in Sion. The latter, still under construction, allowed the team to imagine that the SORTIE project could one day be used to test a structure before its completion, and to propose corrective measures or improvements to emergency exits and alarm systems. Among other things, the project tested the behavior of people with mobility difficulties, visual impairments, and wheelchair users. This interdisciplinary project benefited from the collaboration of Emmanuel Fragnière, Professor at the Tourism Institute, and the Living Lab Handicap coordinated by Benjamin Nanchen, Scientific Assistant at the same institute, and was tested in real-life conditions during a cantonal-level exercise. SORTIE drew lessons from the tests carried out to better understand needs in terms of visual or auditory signals and access to emergency exits. The project ensured that what was visible in the simulation corresponded to reality, particularly when certain emergency exits were no longer available due to a fire.

Improving building evacuation systems and training ideal behavior

The SORTIE project aims to improve building evacuation systems and train people's behavior in the event of danger. Tests carried out in virtual reality have reduced by 70% the time it takes to get out of a disaster-stricken building. It seems that this type of virtual training serves to put people in condition and is more productive than a simple building evacuation test. Davide Calvaresi, who is in charge of the project, seems very optimistic about the future. He says that coordinating the system design, IT technicians and hospital respondents has enabled him to gain important insights. Organizing focus groups, reviewing the literature, managing technical developments, and coordinating testing were all stages in setting up this process, which could ultimately save many lives.

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Mon, 28 Aug 2023 16:32:12 +0200https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/axe-sante-sortie-how-virtual-reality-can-save-lives-207244
<![CDATA[Axe Santé: ALPICAT, a project to combat bacterial resistance.]]>https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/axe-sante-alpicat-a-project-to-combat-bacterial-resistance-206816The Axe Santé is an interdisciplinary center for the development of sustainable health technologies that brings together all the research institutes of the HES-SO Valais Wallis. We met Marc Mathieu, Professor at the Life Technologies Institute, to talk about a project supported by the Axe Santé on which he worked with two colleagues from the Enerypolis Campus for several months: ALPICAT, i.e., the development of prototype catheter ferrules whose surface is coated with antimicrobial molecules.

The challenge of sterilizing medical tools

It's not uncommon to hear in the press that certain bacteria are resistant to antibiotics. Bacteria are necessary for life, but they pose numerous resistance problems, particularly in medical and hospital environments. These pathogens can be transmitted to human beings via medical equipment, for example. It is therefore essential to ensure sterilization of surgical tools and medical equipment in all situations. This is easier to do in a laboratory equipped with an autoclave (a hermetically sealed container used for sterilization) but can prove complicated in a doctor's surgery in an Alpine valley without access to this type of machine, or more particularly when operating in the field. What's more, this method of sterilization is costly, time-, energy- and space-intensive, and poses durability problems when medical equipment is single-use. Finally, the pharmaceutical industry offers many antimicrobials in different formulations, or surface disinfectants that have their limits when it comes to resistant bacterial strains. Professors Marc Mathieu, Bruno Schnyder and Samuel Rey-Mermet therefore want to offer healthcare professionals portable and reusable technologies based on antibacterial peptides with unique properties.

Antibacterial peptides at the service of medicine

Peptides are sequences of amino acids, and this family of molecules belongs to a class of compounds known as polymers. These amino acid sequences exist in natural form but can also be synthesized in the laboratory. For many years, chemical research has been investigating the properties of these molecules, and we know that some peptides are antimicrobial, others antioxidant, and that they can also support the immune system. Their highly active molecules, with properties that enable them to sterilize surfaces with complex geometries, offer high added value thanks to their innovative properties, and are therefore designed to disinfect restricted surfaces. Thus, the ALPICAT project proposes to provide a technology for sterilizing surgical tools or components whose surfaces are first brought into contact with a solution of peptides with antibacterial properties. However, the challenge in this area of research is to make the peptides stable, as natural molecules are vulnerable and have a rather short survival time. We therefore need to develop the right combination of peptides to ensure their prolonged efficacy, as well as how to combine them and graft them to the chosen surface.

An inter-institute project to test hypotheses

This is how Marc Mathieu, head of the Synthetic Peptides and Peptide Mimetics platform, directed his research project, supported by the Health Axis, towards the sterilization of 3D-printed medical catheters using a bath of antibacterial peptides. It turns out that Samuel Rey-Mermet, a researcher in industrial systems, and Bruno Schnyder, a researcher in microbiology at the Life Technologies Institute, are also part of this multi-disciplinary team. Parts designed and printed by the industrial systems teams were treated with peptides developed by Marc Mathieu, and their antimicrobial properties tested by Bruno Schnyder's team. Experiments have shown that these compounds can be used to sterilize connectors, ferrules, and catheters, or to create complex, reusable ferrules that disinfect liquids without the need for specialized, costly laboratory equipment. Marc Mathieu points out that it is difficult to sterilize certain surgical tools because their shape is sometimes very complex or their porosity leaves niches for bacteria that are complicated to sterilize. Treatment with grafted antibacterial peptides could be an effective, accessible, and sustainable solution to this problem, as it enables complete antibacterial coating of porous and complex surfaces.

Marc Mathieu, chemistry at the service of human health

Professor Marc Mathieu has been working as a teacher and researcher at HES-SO Valais-Wallis for 12 years. For 30 years now, he has been interested in biomolecules and peptides, and has devoted his thesis and post-doctorate, as well as part of his career in industry and his research projects at HES-SO Valais-Wallis, to this subject. In particular, he has worked in the field of anti-cancer drugs with industrial partners, start-ups, and SMEs. He has always wanted to put his skills in the exciting field of bio-organic chemistry at the service of healthcare, because he is aware of the immense potential of these peptides, which could be used to treat numerous public health problems.

Photo: credits © HES-SO Valais-Wallis, Laurent Darbellay, from left to right: Prof. Dr. Marc Mathieu, Peptide Laboratory (TEVI), Prof. Dr. Samuel Rey-Mermet, Powder Laboratory (ISI), Prof. Dr. Bruno Schynder, Microbiology Laboratory (TEVI).

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Wed, 21 Jun 2023 13:45:02 +0200https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/axe-sante-alpicat-a-project-to-combat-bacterial-resistance-206816
<![CDATA[Axe Santé: Detecting head trauma in minutes]]>https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/axe-sante-detecting-head-trauma-in-minutes-206731Axe Santé is an interdisciplinary center for the development of sustainable health technologies, which brings together all the research institutes of the HES-SO Valais-Wallis. We caught up with Denis Prim, Scientific Assistant at the Life Technologies Institute, to talk about the project he has been working on for several months: Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Point-of-Care Testing Platform.

Head trauma, a difficult diagnosis

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a little-known pathology, and its treatment is complex. The methods for detecting them, particularly mild head trauma, are few and far between, and not always effective. It is possible to undergo a simple examination by answering a few questions, and/or to undergo a CT scan. Sometimes, however, a mild trauma can have serious consequences, undetected by the medical profession, because the answers to the medical history did not point to an alarming situation. A CT or MRI scan of the head is costly, time-consuming for the medical staff and does not always provide an accurate diagnosis. Repeated mild head injuries, particularly suffered by sportsmen and women, can have serious long-term consequences, and are often not diagnosed, either because of deficiencies in the medical history, or because the injured person is unaware of the problem and therefore does not consult a doctor.

Less invasive detection thanks to biomarkers

To make the detection of mild head trauma safer, faster, and less costly, the project supported by the Axe Santé program proposes to measure three biomarkers in the blood. When shocked, the brain can release molecules via micro-lesions, which are then released into the bloodstream. The idea is to eventually be able to offer a compact, portable device that can detect these biomarkers and indicate whether a person has suffered even a mild head injury. This initial measure would enable sports coaches, paramedics, school nurses, first-aid doctors, emergency physicians or patrol officers, and all those who intervene in the first instance after an accident, to detect a potential head injury and take appropriate action. Everyday accidents that occur during field hockey games, skiing, soccer, or children's playtime are difficult to diagnose, and even minor impacts can be insidious, with serious consequences.

An inter-institute project to help patients and carers

Supported by a national BRIDGE project, the first phase of the project, carried out at the Haute Ecole d'Ingénierie and led by Professor Marc E. Pfeifer, involved developing and validating the strategy of the chosen approach, by testing it on existing instruments. It turned out that these systems had limitations, and that the desired level of performance could not be achieved. Denis Prim, head of the Systems Diagnostics Laboratory, and his colleagues, accompanied by specialists from the Institute of Systems Engineering, therefore set out to develop a demonstrator, a measuring instrument, to overcome these constraints. This device includes optical, mechanical, and electronic modules, as well as dedicated software. The rapid and effective support of the Health Axis has been an indispensable lever for the submission of a more substantial Innosuisse project, enabling us to work with partners in the field, notably hospitals, doctors and accident insurers. It is important to be able to move the measurement of this type of trauma away from central laboratories, to be closer to patients, while ensuring that the quality of diagnosis remains the same.

Denis Prim, a passionate and committed researcher

With a degree in engineering and many years of social, entrepreneurial, and scientific experience, Denis Prim says he is enthusiastic about the idea of helping to improve the daily lives of patients and carers. Funding from Axe Santé will enable him to collaborate actively with other research institutes to propose a device with significant utility and applicability. A specialist in bioanalytics, he admits that it would have been difficult to develop such a project without a group with complementary, cutting-edge knowledge ranging from electronics and mechanics to computer software development. Facilitating the work of carers and helping patients with less invasive, safer, and more accessible measurement tools are at the heart of his passion for science and applied research.

Publication : M. Jović, D. Prim et al, "A Novel Point-of-Care Diagnostic Prototype System for the Simultaneous Electrochemiluminescent Sensing of Multiple Traumatic Brain Injury Biomarkers," Sens. Diagn, May 2023, doi: 10.1039/D3SD00090G. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2023/sd/d3sd00090g

Photo : Credits © HES-SO Valais-Wallis, Laurent Darbellay. From left to right. Mélanie Stäuble (Master student), Denis Prim (Diagnostic Systems laboratory manager), David Tagan, Marc Pignat, Marc Pfeifer (Diagnostic Systems research group manager), Isaline Torche (Bachelor student), Steve Gallay (microelectronics laboratory manager), Milica Jovic.

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Tue, 13 Jun 2023 11:21:29 +0200https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/axe-sante-detecting-head-trauma-in-minutes-206731
<![CDATA[Jakub Mlynar - a sociologist at the institute of Informatics]]>https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/jakub-mlynar--a-sociologist-at-the-institute-of-informatics-206421Why does an IT research institute work with a social scientist? Jakub Mlynar, PhD in sociology and collaborator at the institute of Informatics of the HES-SO Valais-Wallis talks about his projects and research. Today, machines, algorithms and artificial intelligence are an integral part of our lives: smartphones and computers accompany our professional and private lives, our vehicles are electric and connected just as much as our refrigerators or watches. Our interactions with these new tools modify our human behavior and this is precisely the field of study of Jakub Mlynar who is interested in human-machine interactions within the HUCO - Human Centred Computing Group, the research laboratory of Professor Florian Evéquoz.

Conversation, a simple art, yet so difficult to learn.

Jakub Mlynar, originally from Prague, is happy to be able to work in Switzerland, especially at the HES-SO Valais-Wallis, because he can collaborate with people from different disciplines. He is looking forward to thinking about a common language between different scientific fields to look at the problem of interactions between technologies and humans with new perspectives. How do people use technology? This question was the basis of Jakub Mlynar's studies when he was a student at Charles University in the Czech Republic. He focuses on digital technologies and the daily interactions we have with them. Indeed, things that seem simple and natural to us, like having a conversation with another person, is an activity that requires a lot of effort, practice and is not easy to learn or explain. So, imagine how complicated it is to teach a machine - a conversational agent - how to make a conversation feel natural? It is these seemingly insignificant, yet very consequential, everyday human interactions that the researcher analyzes to be able to describe and explain what constitutes them (language, gestures, and non-verbal interactions). This should allow us to better adapt digital technologies to our behaviors to make human-machine interactions more fluid.

Technology modifies our perception of information and affects our behavior.

During his PhD in the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts at Charles University, he analyzed oral history interviews (available at the Malach Center for Visual History at the Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics). In doing so, he found that technology can change our perception of stories that are recorded in the present to speak about the past to people in the future. The medium of video to capture these stories not only changes the way the protagonists tell their stories but also the way the stories are perceived by the audience. During his post-doctorate, Jakub added a dimension to his research by examining how these types of filmed interviews could benefit the learning of students by broadcasting them in classrooms.

It is in Switzerland that he continues his work with Esther González-Martínez at the University of Fribourg, between 2016 and 2018, thanks to a grant of excellence from the Swiss Confederation. He focuses his research on the interactions between the people present in a classroom rather than between the video and the people watching it. How do students work together using a computer and what information is retained during learning through the mediation of video? All these questions lead to improvements in the systems we use every day, such as video conferencing. It is important to know how these tools affect our social interactions and how information technology impacts the environment and human behavior. In the future, this will allow us not only to use more efficient systems, but also to devise legislative safeguards to control their deployment.

Artificial intelligence is more about acquiring skills than intelligence.

From September 2021, Jakub Mlynar will be working at the HES-SO Valais-Wallis, focusing on artificial intelligence as a phenomenon and a social object. Rather than the technology itself, he is interested in the changes it brings to the interactions of humans with each other, between the tool and the human, and how it is integrated into everyday life; think of automated robots in factories, autonomous vehicles or chatbots (conversational agents). As part of the Mobility Lab, he worked on the "Robi at Work" project in partnership with PostAuto and Benjamin Nanchen of the Institute of Tourism to find out how this luggage-carrying robot in Saas-Fee affected human behavior. He discovered that people on the street, the users of the robot, the people who recorded the videos of the interactions in the field and the teleoperator in charge of the semi-autonomous robot all participated to varying degrees in the movement and smooth running of the machine to ensure proper operation. It therefore takes a lot of people to make this type of tool work properly, since its autonomy is quite relative! The researcher finds it essential to bring a sociological and critical vision of the technology because if it is a source of comfort, it can also be at the base of the polarization which separates people on the social networks, of democratic deficit or of social inequalities for those who do not have access to it because of financial means. Before flooding the market with new technologies, it seems wiser to ask what impact they will have on humans, their interactions, and their environment. "We live in a time when we know resources are limited, so we need to ask ourselves if the technologies we are imagining meet a need. If we want to act responsibly, it is no longer possible to introduce new technologies to the market without asking ourselves what the social, human and resource costs are," says Jakub Mlynar.

Personalized medicine is possible if technologies are transparent.

In the medical field, information technologies such as artificial intelligence can complement the work of the medical profession. Indeed, QuantImage is a research platform that allows medical staff to easily build and evaluate AI models for diagnostic purposes, such as differentiating between a cancerous or malignant nodule based on an X-ray image. The medical profession is actively involved in this project, which could provide decisive elements to caregivers to guide the choice of an adequate treatment, but obviously remains cautious in front of tools to which it could delegate important responsibilities, including those of human life. Jakub Mlynar wanted to understand how to use the radiology platform designed and developed by Adrien Depeursinge's team, a researcher in eHealth at the institute of informatics, as efficiently as possible. To do so, he filmed about thirty caregivers in groups of two using the QuantImage platform to analyze radiological images. By analyzing the students' interactions with the software, the researcher was able to identify problems with the use of the platform and suggest improvements in design and functionality. All these researches show that we often interact socially with digital tools and machines as if they had a personality. These tools and machines are part of our society, and we need to think about their usefulness, the trust we place in them, the transparency of their operation or the level of responsibility we are willing to delegate to them. Geoffrey Hinton, nicknamed the "godfather of AI", recently left his position at Google to denounce the risks linked to the technology he helped develop. However, we must also be aware that artificial intelligence is not as intelligent as humans can be thanks to their mental and cognitive capacities. Artificial intelligence allows to perform specific tasks close to practical skills. It should be taught and explained in these terms to avoid confusion with human intelligence.

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Thu, 11 May 2023 08:47:11 +0200https://www.hevs.ch/en/news/jakub-mlynar--a-sociologist-at-the-institute-of-informatics-206421