Apparatus for Automated Nerve Identification with Polarimetric Imaging and Artificial Intelligence | The George Washington University

Apparatus for Automated Nerve Identification with Polarimetric Imaging and Artificial Intelligence

Case ID: 022-023-Park

Researchers at GW have developed a novel solution to identify nerve tissues that can allow an accurate effective performance of a nerve-related surgery. The novel solution is based on a deep-learning network framework that utilizes a U-Net architecture with a Transformer block based fusion module at the bottleneck. The identification of nerve tissues may occur from a multi-modal optical imaging system. The novel solution also affords a heightened situational awareness during surgery thus allowing a respective surgeon to better perform associated duties. The novel solution also affords a respective surgery or the like to be greatly cost-effective owing to the utilization of a deep learning architecture with multi-modal inputs.

The disclosed invention can be implemented as either an apparatus, a device, a system, or a method as can be appreciated. The disclosed invention can include various aspects as follows: (i) an optical imaging nerve identification module that uses Mueller polarimetric imaging that can calculate intrinsic birefringence patterns from fibrous nerve structures; (ii) a U-Net Architecture  module to assist in associated computer vision and medical imaging tasks, especially with respect to related semantic segmentation tasks as can be appreciated; (iii) a transformer module associated with the U-Net Architecture module, that can be utilized for fusion for varied modalities as can be appreciated. 

Fig. 1 – One example of an aspect of the disclosed invention

 

Applications:

  • Prediction of nerve tissues during/for nerve-related surgery
    • Non-invasive intraoperative nerve identification

Advantages:

  • Accurate and effective performance of surgery
  • Increased situational awareness as to nerves during surgery
  • Cost-effective

Patent Information:

Title App Type Country Patent No. File Date Issued Date Patent Status
Real Time Automated Nerve Identification System PCT *United States of America   3/24/2023   Published

For Information, Contact:

Michael Harpen
Licensing Manager
George Washington University
mharpen@gwu.edu

Inventors:

Chung Hyuk Park
Gary Milam
Baijun Xie
Keywords: