The MIRTH AI Lab at the University of Florida Intelligent Critical Care Center was recently awarded a $25,000 Children’s Miracle Network (CMN) Pilot Project Innovation Award under the leadership of Co-Principal Investigators Dr. Wei Shao, Assistant Professor of Quantitative Health in the Department of Medicine, Division of Nephrology, and Dr. Michael Weiss, Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology.
The pioneering project, titled “The impact of sedation on regional brain volumes measured in pre-term neonatal term-corrected MRIs,” will transform the current method for analyzing magnetic resonance images (MRIs) in pre-term neonates at UF Health through the development of an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to auto-segment term-corrected MRIs. “This grant will allow our group to analyze specific brain regions to study the effect of sedation,” said Weiss. “Currently, we manually segment whole brains through a process that takes up to 6 hours for a single brain and only yields whole volumes. This project will advance our ability to analyze regional brain volumes in pre-term neonates and establish a collaborative relationship with AI faculty at the University of Florida.”
This undertaking holds significant implications, as premature neonates are susceptible to enduring neurodevelopmental anomalies, potentially exacerbated by the application of sedatives. Considering the limited understanding surrounding dexmedetomidine, a medication used for sedation, and its impact on brain maturation, addressing the question of its detrimental effects on developing brains becomes imperative. The investigators will also study the association of sedation use, duration, dosage, and type with regional brain volumes.
Shao emphasized the role of his team of engineers, “We will create an AI model that can be used to analyze brain structures in pre-term neonatal MRIs obtained at term-corrected gestational age, which we anticipate will save physicians hours of laborious work. It is critical to the long-term care of pre-term babies to study whole and specific brain region volumes and understand the impact of sedation on their developing brains, including the possibility of brain injury associated with the use of sedation.”
The acronym MIRTH AI, which stands for Medical Imaging Research for Translational Healthcare with Artificial Intelligence, encapsulates Dr. Shao’s vision for his lab at the University of Florida. This CMN award not only underscores the MIRTH AI Lab’s groundbreaking research at the University of Florida but also its commitment to fostering innovative avenues in medical imaging research with a direct impact on patient care.