Researchers are making use of technology motion capture artificial intelligence that has been used in films such as Avatar: The Water Sense in order to prematurely track the onset of diseases.
According to the BBC, this new system makes use of artificial intelligence to analyze body movements and thus diagnose disorders.
“I am completely impressed with the results. The impact on diagnostics and the development of new drugs for a wide range of diseases It could be absolutely huge,” he says. Valeria Ricottipart of the team that is working on the new development.
This system has been in development for 10 years and has previously been tested in patients with Friedreich’s ataxia (AF) and Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).
“Our new approach detects subtle movements that humans cannot detect,” says Aldo Faisal from Imperial College. “It has the ability to transform clinical trials and improve diagnosis and patient follow-up.”
Technology can speed up drug trials and cut costs
The beauty of this technology is that it also has the potential to speed up drug trials and reduce costs.
“We can test more drugs with fewer patients at a lower cost,” he says Paola GiuntiDirector of the UCL Ataxia Centre.
“This will attract the pharmaceutical industry to invest in rare diseases,” adds Professor Richard Festenstein from the London Institute of Medical Sciences of the Medical Research Council. “The main beneficiary of our research will be patients, because the technology will be able to generate new treatments much faster.”
The advantage of this system is its advanced ability to quickly predict. In tests, they found that it could predict the worsening of the disease for 12 months, after being tested with FA patients.
Another team tested it on 21 children with DMD and found that it could predict how their movement would be affected six months from now with much more accuracy than a doctor could.
As of today there is no cure for FA or DMD, so early diagnosis is crucial to monitor the diseases.
In this way, this technology, which has been used in films such as Avatar: The Sense of Water, among others, can offer hope to those who suffer from these genetic movement diseases and who do not have treatment, thus providing an early diagnosis.
