combining human and machine resources toward efficient, accurate and remote diagnosis of malaria.
"The most exciting aspect is that this is an entirely novel approach in the area of visual diagnostics, which really challenges diagnostic algorithms used to date," said Karin Nielsen, a professor of infectious diseases in the department of pediatrics at the Geffen School of Medicine. "It is diagnostics outside the box that is, the study introduces an entirely new concept in diagnostics with the use of games for this purpose. The potential applications of this new approach are immense."
How the game works:
Before playing the game, each player is given a brief online tutorial and an explanation of what malaria-infected red blood cells typically look like using sample images. After completing a short training phase, players go through the actual game, in which they are presented with multiple frames of red blood cell images and can use a "syringe" tool to "kill" the infected cells one-by-one and use a "collect-all" tool to designate the remaining cells in the frame as "healthy."
Within each frame, there are a certain number of cells whose status (i.e., infected or not) is known by the game but not by the players. These control cell images allow Ozcan's team to dynamically estimate the performance of gamers as they go through each frame and also helps the team assign a score for every frame the gamer passes through.
"I believe that, similar to other very innovative ideas, one of the major challenges will be the skepticism of traditional microscopists, pathologists and clinical laboratory personnel, not to mention malaria experts, who will initially view with suspicion a gaming approach in malaria diagnostics," said Nielsen, also an author of the study. "It is a very revolutionary proposal and it might take a few clinical studies in the field to document the efficacy of this platform in order to convince traditional
'/>"/>
| Contact: Wileen Wong Kromhout wwkromhout@support.ucla.edu 310-206-0540 University of California - Los Angeles Source:Eurekalert |
Related biology news :
1. NC State researchers get to root of parasite genome
2. Researchers find animal with ability to survive climate change
3. Researchers find an essential gene for forming ears of corn
4. Researchers note differences between people and animals on calorie restriction
5. Researchers study acoustic communication in deep-sea fish
6. Researchers discover that growing up too fast may mean dying young in honey bees
7. Researchers study how pistachios may improve heart health
8. UI researchers find potentially toxic substance present in Chicago air
9. Researchers develop new self-training gene prediction program for fungi
10. Case Western Reserve University researchers track Chernobyl fallout
11. Childrens National researchers develop novel anti-tumor vaccine
| Copyright © 2003-2012 Bio-Medicine. All rights reserved. ABOUT | CONTACT US | DISCLAIMER | PRIVACY POLICY | TERMS AND CONDITIONS |  |