Bengaluru: Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Wipro GE Healthcare today announced the inauguration of an advanced centre for innovation and research at the IISc.
The centre named ‘WIPRO GE Healthcare – Computational and Data Sciences Collaborative Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence in Medical and Healthcare Imaging’ will be located at the department of Computational and Data Sciences (CDS) of IISc. The research centre will focus on developing next level of healthcare diagnostics with deep learning technology, artificial intelligence and future-ready digital interfaces to provide highly sophisticated diagnostic, medical image-reconstruction techniques, protocols for faster and better imaging.
In the initial phase, the facility will work with over fifty students and three faculty members of IISc. The thrust of this collaborative laboratory will be to work closely with clinicians as well as Wipro GE Healthcare to integrate these computational models into clinical workflows to help doctors improve patient outcomes.
The collaboration will explore the following subjects: light-weight deep learning models for classification and segmentation of COVID-19 lesions in lung ultrasound and CT images, deep learning models for improving as well as classifying spectral-domain optical coherence tomography images in ophthalmology, deep learning-based medical image reconstruction methods and exploiting the structure of 3D volume data that necessitates fewer annotations, thereby reducing development time and annotation cost.
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IISc will meet the infrastructural requirements of the lab including finished interiors, power backup, internet connectivity, air conditioning. Wipro GE Healthcare which is commemorating its thirty years of work in the country is supporting this centre with a one-time grant, as part of its CSR efforts. This grant will be used to equip the lab with necessary hardware and software tools like state-of-the-art deep learning servers, advanced visualization workstation, LED monitors and software such as Pytorch, Tensor Flow, Keras and Pycharm.
Speaking on the collaboration, Dileep Mangsuli, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), GE Healthcare, South Asia said, “the world healthcare is getting transformed through the use of digital technologies which enable better healthcare. This transformation can be accelerated by building a collaborative ecosystem of industry and academic partners. This Healthcare Innovation Lab at IISc will help bring to market unique digital solutions which will get integrated into our Edison platform and intelligent devices, helping clinicians solve some of the toughest healthcare challenges.”
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Prof. Phaneendra Yalavarthy, who is the convener of the collaborative lab as well as the Chair of the Office of Development and Alumni Affairs, IISc, said, “Private-Public partnership is in the DNA of IISc and the collaborative lab with the aid of artificial intelligence to be channelled to healthcare is timely as it gives the push for digital technologies. Wipro GE Healthcare's funding is appreciative. Translation of research work carried out in the lab into the clinic will be prioritised and there is no better industry partner in India than Wipro GE Healthcare that can accelerate this. This is only the beginning of the collaboration and we are hoping to scale up the research activities in the near future.”
GE Healthcare and IISc, the country’s leading institute and university for research and higher education in science and engineering, have had a longstanding relationship. The two institutions have partnered to promote innovation in healthcare imaging in several areas including research projects done by faculty and students of IISc along with Wipro GE employees, funding fellowships for master’s programmes and internships as well as the opportunity for Wipro GE employees to pursue PhD at IISc, among others. This innovation lab further cements our partnership in the emerging area of digital health.
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