Interaction of Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship winners with Secretary of MEITY and Principal Scientific Advisor

Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship winners announced - Interact with Secretary of MEITY and Principal Scientific Advisor

Abstract:
Prostate cancer is the second largest cause of cancer deaths in men worldwide. The prostate is a dense organ that is surrounded by many other organs. Consequently, it is difficult to locate suspicious regions within the prostate for a diagnostic biopsy whose needle cannot be guided easily using real-time and portable imaging techniques, such as ultrasound (US) imaging. The standard diagnostic procedure is random needle biopsy, in which there is always a chance to miss a small tumor mass of high grade. On the other hand, the tumor contours are better visible in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Therefore, a fusion of the two imaging modalities has the potential to combine their advantages. However, the existing solutions require manual matching of fiducial points on the two modalities, and they do not simulate real-time organ displacement and deformation during biopsy or surgery. Furthermore, the potential of the US imaging has not been exploited very well till now. For example, the wave interference pattern in the US, which is considered as “speckle noise,” contains a lot of information about the structure and pathobiology of the organ. But, this information is lost and left unused when the US images are despeckled. Instead, the information in the wave interference pattern may be usable, if disentangled.