Latest Updates
Three teams from Dr. Hyeokhyen Kown's lab won Best Poster Awards from the Bio-STAR AI symposium
April 12, 2024
Congratulations to Scarlett Duan (Emory CS MS), Arya Mohan (GT CS MS), Lauhitya Reddy (Emory-GT BME MS), Shoibolina Kaushik (Emory CS MS), and Ketan Anand (GT ECE MS) from Hyeokhyen Kown's Lab on receiving the best poster awards at the Bio-STAR AI symposium hosted by Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology.
Dr. Kwon’s lab presented their latest research in developing accessible, affordable, and scalable computer vision and wearable-based AI systems for quantifying brain health, including mild cognitive impairment (Scarlett Duan; Winner), Parkinson’s disease and stroke (Arya Mohan and Lauhitya Reddy; Winner), gait pathology (Shoibolina Kaushik and Ketan Anand; Winner), and autism spectrum disorder (Barun Das).
Stay tuned for publications on these exciting projects! If you're interested in contributing to the development of accessible, affordable, and scalable health AI systems, please contact Dr. Kwon.
Megan Schwinne, MPH, has had her research article published in Frontiers
April 1, 2024
Congratulations to Megan Schwinne, MPH, on the publication of her research article titled “Sensitivity of the African neuropsychology battery memory subtests and learning slopes in discriminating APOE 4 and amyloid pathology in adult individuals in the Democratic Republic of Congo” in Frontiers.
Utilizing a cohort of approximately 100 individuals from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Dr. Jean Ikanga (Principal Investigator), Megan Schwinne, and colleagues conducted an analysis of plasma biomarkers and dementia screening tests pertinent to Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Their aim was not only to elucidate the relationship between plasma biomarkers and AD but also to contribute to the literature concerning this under-researched population. This particular publication focused on assessing the sensitivity of subtests derived from the African Neuropsychology Battery (ANB) and their associated learning slope metrics in detecting amyloid pathology and APOE e4 status within the cohort. Sensitivity rates for the learning metrics ranged from 54.3% to 89.7%, with certain tests exhibiting superior performance compared to others. Nevertheless, the area under the curve (AUC) values ranged from 0.60 to 0.69. The study highlighted that some ANB memory tests and learning slope metrics could effectively differentiate individuals with normal cognitive function from those with amyloid pathology or discern those with or without APOE e4, mirroring findings observed in Western populations.
Drs. Kwon and McKay Invited to Speak at ORACLE
March 28, 2024
Congratulations to Drs. Kwon and McKay for being invited to speak at the Oracle Life Sciences Connect in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Thursday, March 28th. They were invited to discuss their recent work on applications of deep learning to quantify Freezing of Gait and other signs in Parkinson’s disease. This work was originally supported in part by Oracle and is now published in Sensors.
Dr. Azra Ismail received an Outstanding Dissertation Award from SIGCHI
March 2024
Congratulations to Dr. Azra Ismail on receiving the Outstanding Dissertation Award from Association for Computing Machinery (AMC) Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI).
Dr. Azra Ismail’s dissertation examines and designs AI systems in and for resource-constrained health settings, specifically focusing on maternal and childcare delivery in India. It represents an exemplary showcase for using a feminist lens to study AI integration in a range of critical settings: with existing data flows and practices, in multi-stakeholder care ecologies, and in everyday care work. The committee acknowledged the importance of the topic, the clarity and reflexivity of the analysis, and the social impact of its contributions. They commended the thesis as laudable, pioneering work.
Dr. Ismail will be formally recognized as an award recipient at the upcoming ACM CHI 2024 conference in Hawaii in May 2024.
Zuzana Koščová named finalist in 2024 JWECIC at ISCE.
February 9, 2024
Zuzana Koščová, a Software Engineer in Dr. Clifford’s lab, has been selected as a finalist for the 2024 Jos Willems Early Career Investigator Competition (JWECIC) with her work entitled “Prediction of atrial fibrillation from overnight Polysomnograms”.
Her work focuses on using machine learning and deep learning methods for the early prediction of atrial fibrillation from the ECG channel in polysomnographic recordings. Since atrial fibrillation is one of the most common cardiac arrhythmias and is associated with an increased risk of stroke and heart failure, early prediction of this pathology could help to implement appropriate stroke and heart failure prevention tools.
The competition will take place at the International Society of Computerized ECG conference in Braselton, GA on April 4-7, 2024.
Dr. J. Lucas McKay has been promoted to Associate Professor
Congratulations to Dr. J. Lucas McKay on his promotion to Associate Professor in BMI, with effect from September 1st, with simultaneous promotion in Biomedical Engineering (BME) and Neurology. Dr. McKay is an invaluable asset to all three departments, supporting clinical work, driving research, and also serving as BMI’s Vice Chair for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
Dr. McKay’s research combines motion analysis and posturography with shallow and deep machine learning techniques to understand the lived experience of Parkinson’s disease (PD) and other conditions. He is particularly interested in the underpinnings of freezing of gait (FOG) in Parkinson’s disease, and will co-host the 2025 Meeting of the International Consortium for Freezing of Gait here next Summer. Dr. McKay also plays an important clinical service support role in the Movement Disorders program within the Emory Brain Health Center. He architects and maintains the processing pipelines and databases for the full-body behavioral testing facility there, which currently holds the largest database of full-body kinematic data of movement disorders patients worldwide. In 2023 he implemented the processing for additional testing equipment that enabled the facility to increase overall common procedural terminology (CPT) code generation by 50%. He also contributes to numerous discovery studies and clinical trials in PD, MCI, stroke, and other conditions as a formal study biostatistician.
Shaoyan Pan, MS, was awarded the Best Student Paper at SPIE Medical Imaging 2024
February 1, 2024
Shaoyan Pan, MS, a BMI PhD dysentery supervised by Dr. Xiaofeng Yang was awarded the Robert F. Wagner All-Conference Best Student Paper at SPIE Medical Imaging 2024 entitled “3D Volumetric CT image reconstruction with single X-ray projection using denoising diffusion probabilistic model.” This new work holds promise for real-time tumor tracking and post-treatment dose verification applications.
The official announcement of this award will take place during the SPIE Medical Imaging Awards and Plenary Session on February 18, 2024, in San Diego.
Dr. Yun Wang has been appointed as an Assistant Professor at BMI
January 2024
BMI is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Yun Wang as a new assistant professor.
Dr. Wang joined Biomedical Informatics in January and will direct the independent “NextGen Maternal-Infant Informatics Lab (NexMii),” a laboratory at the forefront of pioneering research at the intersection of technology and healthcare. NexMii is committed to three fundamental research objectives: (1) the application of artificial intelligence to enhance maternal health; (2) the use of AI to better analyze fetal and infant neuroimaging data, clarify the trajectory of neurodevelopment in the crucial first 1,000 days of life, thus fostering optimal early childhood outcomes; and (3) the integration of comprehensive biological data analysis to examine the impact of maternal health on infant brain development.
Before joining Emory BMI, Dr. Wang served as an Assistant Professor at Duke Psychiatry and Electrical & Computer Engineering. Her research, now supported by grants from NICHD, NIMH, and the Brain and Behavior Foundation, positions her to lead NexMii in harnessing AI methods to improve maternal and infant well-being, from early detection of potential health issues to personalized care and beyond.