Research Focus: Dr. Tong Ye & Dr. Joseph Carson
Dr. Tong Ye (Left) is a professor of Bioengineering at Clemson University. He serves as one of the project leaders in Thrust 2 (DL-Imaging Model Enabled Biomedical Devices for Personalized Prognostic and Treatment Applications) of the ADAPT in SC project. Dr. Joseph Carson (Right) is Professor of Physics at the College of Charleston and serves as a collaborator and industrial advisor in this project.
Development of an AI-enabled micro-arthroscope for image-guided articular cartilage repair
Articular cartilage has a limited healing capacity; unless treated, traumatic or degenerative lesions eventually progress to osteoarthritis, a leading cause of disability worldwide. Many patients are treated for cartilage focal defects. For optimal outcomes, surgeons must accurately determine the margins of cartilaginous defects to completely remove damaged areas while preserving healthy cartilage. Currently, no technique can accomplish this during surgery. The goal of this project is to develop an intelligent micro- arthroscopic system equipped with a cutting-edge imaging device and deep learning-enabled automated image analysis for in vivo, real-time assessment of articular cartilage defects during treatment to guide cartilage-repair surgery.
As one major component of the project, Dr. Ye’s team focused on building a tissue navigation system and developing a deep learning method for real-time image processing. This tissue navigation system follows the surface contour measured by the 3D imaging system developed by Dr. Carson’s lab. The navigation system also aligns a sample to achieve the optimized imaging quality at different tissue locations. The acquired imaging data is analyzed by a deep learning algorithm to automatically identify live or dead cells and measure cell viability. The team is currently optimizing the workflow toward a fully automated tissue navigation, image acquisition and image analysis workflow. The ultimate goal is to implement the approach with a compact microscope and a robotic navigation system.
