Smart Microscopy for Intraopertive Brain Mapping/Therapeutic

Total resection of brain cancer determines the survival of millions of patients with brain tumors. Current microscopes are unable to help surgeons. Smart Intraoperative microscopes could enable surgeons precisely detect and completely remove brain tumors using neurophotonics, multimodality imaging, Artificial Intelligent, Machine learning, Augmented reality and predictive modeling.

Annually millions of patients die from brain cancers (primary and secondary) worldwide. Primary and secondary brain tumors (i.e metastasis) affect over 200,000 individuals per year in the United States alone with a high mortality rate and over $49,242 in average direct medical expenses. This does not include rehabilitation costs which will increase dramatically over the years. For patients diagnosed with brain tumors, the likelihood of significant reduction in income increases threefold, since more than 2/3 of them are unable to go back to the workforce. 47% of these patients incur credit card debt, with 7.2% declaring bankruptcy, 15% resorting to a second or third mortgage and 8.5% caching into their retirement or life insurance savings.  

Smart Microscopy Inc integrates emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Neurophotonics, Predictive Modeling, Augmented Reality, cloud computing, supercomputing and machine learning into the intraoperative microscopes. This new device will revolutionize intraoperative brain mapping, enable neurosurgeons precisely delineate margins of tumor and achieve total resection of brain tumors. Such an improvement would contribute to a higher quality of life for patients, bringing the patients back to the workforce and possibly reducing rehabilitation time and costs, thus making a significant impact on the economic recovery of individuals and the society.

Existing intraoperative microscopes have inherent limitations in providing real-time intraoperative feedback to the neurosurgeons and automatically delineate tumors because they only magnify the surgical field.  The Smart Microscope will provide important real-time imaging and big data analytics information about the tumor location, texture, size and blood flow resulting in big data-based precision guided localization of tumors. This technology will be a game changer for surgical oncology because it will enable neurosurgeons achieve complete resection, reduce healthcare cost, increase healthcare efficiency, and significantly change the surgical outcomes of millions of patients worldwide.

Determination of pre- and post-resection volumes of tumors using MRI/CT are of limited intra-operative value, since they are not obtained in real time.  In most cases, these imaging modalities are still non-dynamic with respect to intraoperative changes of brain topography and tumor dimensions due to resection and or manipulations of the tumors. An accurate visual assessment of tumor margins is extremely difficult because the tumor margins are riddled by cancerous cells. Thus, there is a great need for development of new multimodality intra-operative optical imaging, which could automatically detect the margin as well as aggressiveness of the tumors. 

Smart Microscopy Inc comprised of leading team of engineers, scientists and neurosurgeons who have been studying this challenging issue of intraoperative mapping of brain tumors for more than two decades.  We have published heavily on the topic including the textbook of neurophotonics and brain mapping: https://www.crcpress.com/Neurophotonics-and-Brain-Mapping/Chen-Kateb/p/book/9781482236859 We have developed and integrated new optical/neurophotonics techniques into the smart microscope such as NASA Thermal Imaging (USC pilot study https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyvRRXzdNaI;https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=603 ) and NASA UV imaging: https://www.cedars-sinai.edu/Patients/Programs-and-Services/Brain-Tumor-Center/NASA-Camera-Looks-for-Tumors.aspx Therefore the team has a great knowledge, know- how and the background to bring together neurophotonics, artificial intelligence, augmented reality and machine learning.

This technology could help patients with brain cancers. The auto-delineating system proposed in this project can lead to complete tumor resurrection by providing a precise and real time multimodality imaging analysis feedback to neurosurgeons based on Neurophotonics, AI, Supercomputing, Augmented reality and multimodality imaging/big data. This system could provide neurosurgeons with a tool that could dramatically contribute to the surgical precision and intraoperative decision making. This in turn will contribute to lower mortality and morbidity, which could decrease in direct and indirect healthcare costs. This technology will be included in each intraoperative microscope worldwide.

hgher survival and better surgical outcome - 100 patients in phase one trial (1-2 clinical center(s))

read time data processing, hgher survival and better surgical outcome - 300-500 Phase 2 Clinical trial (3-10 clinical centers)

Here are top 3 reasons why this is the team, which could deliver the solution we have proposed:

1) we are one of the pioneering multidisciplinary team of neurosurgeons, scientists and engineers

2) our knowledge and know-how of Integrating of AI, augmented reality, neurophotonics, multimodality imaging and machine learning has been well established

3) uniquness of the invention has been recognized by office of Technology Transfer and patent at NASA/JPL-Caltech; to our knowledge there is no technology/group exists working on developing the smart Microscope in a way we are describing it. 

In our proposal we have identified a major problem with cancer diagnostics and therapeutics impacting millions of people worldwide.  This technology is aimed at improving the lives of millions of brain cancer patients worldwide by providing a cutting-edge diagnostic and therapeutic tool for thousands of surgeons worldwide, which could be a total game changer for the field of surgical oncology.  

Neurosurgeons will be able to have this microscope in their hospital and clinics. Patients could benefit from such technology at the hospital they are being treated.

We have shown piece-by-piece how the technology could revolutionize the field of surgical oncology but we have not yet put all pieces together.   This funding will enable us to achieve that goal.  We have already spoken to major manufacturers of microscope.  They will be heavily investing in this technology should we provide the final prototype.  The technology will be market ready in few years and we already have an exit strategies in place. The major manufacturer of microscope will be also happy to scale up the manufacturing of the technology.

Blood Artifacts might interfere with the optical profile observed using Optical images of the tumor may be an issue. We estimate that this will not be a significant problem because the similar artifacts will be present in the training set/machine learning therefore the learning based classifier will filter the artifacts. Optical profile at different stages of tumor might be different. We will perform fuzzy classification of the tumor tissue. This will solve the problem by assign probabilities to each pixel in the optical imaging screen about the tissue boundary. 

https://www.google.com/patents/WO2016019347A1?cl=en

https://www.cedars-sinai.edu/Patients/Programs-and-Services/Brain-Tumor-Center/NASA-Camera-Looks-for-Tumors.aspx

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/science/brainmap.html

We have been very successful in our scientific and technological design. However, when it comes to commercialization of neurotechnologies science is not enough. We need to partner and collaborate with groups who are experts in helping scientists to scale up their technologies and impact millions of people with cancer.  After reviewing your website and talking to few people we believe that collaboration with Solver could expedite our ability to help millions of cancer patients worldwide.

Society for Brain Mapping and Therapeutics has global network of 140,000 scientists, physicians and engineers.  Brain Mapping Foundation has been funding most of this research in last 20 years (near $3M in pat R and D resources)

none as of today