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Advancing Smart Optical Imaging and Sensing for Health

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ASTONISH (Advancing Smart Optical Imaging and Sensing for Health)

Période du rapport: 2018-06-01 au 2019-05-31

The ageing population and related increase in chronic diseases put considerable pressure on both the healthcare system and the society, resulting in an unsustainable rise of healthcare costs. As a result there is an urgent need to improve efficiency of care and reduce hospitalisation time in order to control cost and increase quality of life.

Addressing this need, medical applications need to become less invasive and improve disease detection, diagnosis and treatment using advanced imaging and sensing techniques. This requires not only breakthroughs in (image) sensing, but also in the processing and fusion of multiple imaging modalities and the way relevant information is displayed to the clinician.

ASTONISH has delivered breakthrough imaging and sensing technologies for monitoring, diagnosis and treatment applications by developing smart optical imaging technology that extends the use of minimally invasive diagnosis and treatment and allows for unobtrusive health monitoring. The project has integrated miniaturized optical components, data processing units and SW applications into smart imaging systems that are less obtrusive, cheaper, more reliable and easier to use than state of the art systems. This has resulted into 6 demonstrators where the technologies have been integrated, validated and in some cases part of pre-clinical testing in the scope of the project.

The overall project objective for the third year was to finalize the technology integration activities in the context of the ASTONISH applications and perform verification tests and pre-clinical validation.
Within all use cases, the partners have successfully worked on the evaluation of the demonstrators which have been realized in the second year. During two consortium workshops the progress in each use case was demonstrated and feedback from end users has been collected during pre-clinical validations. With this the main objectives for the 3rd year have been achieved.
The overall project objective for the second year was to develop the planned technologies in the context of the ASTONISH applications, perform the first verification tests and realise (partial)-demonstrators.
Within all use cases, the partners have successfully worked on the integration of the technology building blocks realized in the first year. During two consortium workshops the progress in each use case was demonstrated and feedback from end users is collected during early validations. With this the main objectives for the 2nd year have been achieved.

To align the work of all partners and structure all activities across the Work Packages and Use Cases two full consortium meetings (Brno Nov 2017 and Amsterdam May 2018) and a large number of smaller scale meetings have been held. In addition, the Project Management Team has biweekly tele-conferences to discuss the progress and also within the technology Work Packages there are regular calls to align the contributing partners. Additionally the ASTONISH achievements have been analysed and compared towards the state-of-the art. The overview presented in this report shows the good progress and status of the project.

From a technical perspective, the main objective for the reporting period has been the integration of sensing technologies, data processing and analysis algorithms and new SW applications and UI technologies. The integration of these building blocks will lead to new clinical applications or better ways to perform existing applications.
The overall concept within ASTONISH builds on the development and application of common imaging/sensing technologies. Smart algorithms, multimodal fusion techniques and biomedical signal processing will process the acquired data and advanced user interfaces will simplify the complex clinical tasks. These technology components will be integrated to build application specific solutions for physiological signs monitoring, tumour detection, minimally invasive surgery, brain function monitoring and rehabilitation.

Smart algorithms, multimodal fusion techniques and biomedical signal processing will process the acquired data and advanced user interfaces will simplify the complex clinical tasks. These technology components will be integrated together with other conventional imaging technologies to build application-specific solutions for physiological monitoring, tumour detection, minimally invasive surgery, brain function monitoring and rehabilitation.

The technology developed by ASTONISH will allow physicians to record, over a several-days period, highly relevant parameters for the early detection of cardiovascular or metabolic risk. It invests in developing portable devices that will allow for early detection of brain abnormalities, which are now only possible to measure in a hospital environment. Additionally, the project will develop the next generation of medical systems for optical surgical navigation and automated detection of skin cancer using optical biopsy.

The ASTONISH partners cover the full value chain, from semiconductor manufacturing to clinical centres testing the final application. The proposed innovations improve the global competitiveness of the European industry in the healthcare domain and will extend the propositions of the electronic and imaging industry partners resulting in better market position.
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