Riverstart and Opticelastograph: OpticElastograph

The main articles are:

• Cancer diagnosis
• Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
• Artificial intelligence in radiology
• Machine Learning

2024: OpticElastograph Web Platform Announcement

On April 5, 2024, Riverstat announced that Russian scientists and developers have created a web platform for researchers based on ML, which helps fight cancer.

According to the company, in the fight against oncology, it is important to make a diagnosis on time, build a treatment plan and carry out an operation, if possible, preserving the organ. The sooner the oncologist can see the necessary information about the state of bioscience, the higher the chances of taking the patient into remission.

Russian scientists and developers are looking for ways to get such information faster and cheaper, in a non-invasive way. Russian companies Riverstart and Opticelastograph, which includes scientists from the IPF RAS, have created the OpticalElastograph web platform, which processes tomographic scans and provides detailed data on bioscience, which was previously difficult to obtain. So the doctor can apply optical biopsy methods and receive detailed data non-invasively. When creating algorithms, statistical ML methods were used.

Studies confirm that this kind of data helps to more accurately diagnose, recognize the subtype of cancer and clearly see the edges of a cancer tumor. By doing this, you can detect cancer earlier, saving precious time, and cut out diseased cells with great chances of preserving the organ.

Optical biopsy is carried out non-invasively: the scientist does not need to spend time cutting and staining samples for histological examination, he monitors samples in vivo - right on a living organism. The body does not need to experience surgery and recover.

With a non-invasive biopsy, the researcher can monitor the condition of cancerous tumors grown on the skin of experimental mice right on top of them, and do so constantly by monitoring growth and response to chemotherapy. It saves the time it took to perform invasive biopsies and uses fewer test animals, as well as getting more accurate results due to continuous monitoring. The results of such studies are used to find effective treatments for cancer.

A study of breast cancer tissues has shown the role optical biopsy technologies play in performing organ-preserving surgeries. One breast cancer study tested methods for early detection of oncology. The optical biopsy method allows you to consider the bioscience with a micrometer-level resolution. To understand scale: one micrometer is a thousandth of a millimeter. Thanks to such scales, it was possible to accurately find the boundaries of the tumor: to separate areas of breast fat cells from necrotic cancer cells, even if they are very similar in properties. This means that you can perform surgery, precisely remove the cancerous tumor and preserve the chest. The study is described in more detail in the scientific journal Optica Publishing Group.

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The first image is obtained invasively by histology. Another image obtained non-invasively, with the help of optical biopsy, is a map showing the levels of tissue stiffness. It allows you to clearly see the accumulation of tumor cells and the transition from healthy tissue to a cancer tumor.

Special programs highlight the information required by the researcher on tomograms. Programs are integrated into a web platform that allows you to apply them to user-downloaded scans and use them in research worldwide.

How does it work:

• Employees of research institutes, scientists, doctors, medical staff of laboratories can download tomographic scans and choose what information to display.
• The web platform will process scans and build maps on the screen with the necessary information. For example, with blood vessels or with tissue deformation, with stiffness in different segments, something else - depends on what the researcher studies. You can configure the parameters for the analysis.

The platform allows you to use universal programs for analyzing tomograms and customized for a specific device, bioscience or scientist's request. Data can be shared with colleagues, used for development other treatments, for teaching students, to form and mark up datacets for learning. AI

The use of AI technologies is a trend in healthcare. Algorithms can automatically find diseases, determine their severity, suggest methods of treatment and dosage of drugs, increase the accuracy of surgical manipulations. AI is able to make forecasts based on the information it has, which means it can predict diseases. Study the patient's medical record, their genetic information, the results of tests and studies, and on the basis of this predict the patient's probability of getting sick with something specific.

With OpticElastograph, you can already collect and mark large data networks for AI training. For April 2024, the developers are testing the use of neural networks for processing scans and detecting pathologies.

Optical biopsy, as of April 2024, is the gold standard in ophthalmology. Retinal layers are scanned with light beam and changes are determined, edema, hemorrhages, inflammatory processes and other problems are detected.

This research method allows you to go beyond ophthalmology and use optical biopsy in areas where this method is clearly useful, but is still very expensive. For example, in oncology, gynecology, cardiology, surgery, dermatology and aesthetic cosmetology.

Research on the use of optical biopsy in various fields is carried out by a collaboration of employees of the Institute of Photonic Technologies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Sechenov University and the Opticelastograph company. Tomogram processing methods allow you to analyze the elasticity of samples thinner than one millimeter. This is necessary in cardiac surgery: the study showed that with their help it is possible to analyze the biomechanics of the tissue of the pericardium - the pericardial bag of a person - and perform surgery to replace the leaflets of the aortic valve.

Another example: in otolaryngology and maxillofacial surgery, cartilaginous implants are used, for example, to treat tracheal stenosis. A laser is used during the creation of implants. Optical biopsy allows you to monitor the stability of the shape of the implant and select a lower laser temperature, at which the likelihood of deformation is reduced.