Novel Data Science and AI approaches for Brain Health and Brain Disease

Our Focus

The goals of the FRP titled “Novel data science and AI approaches for Brain Health and Brain Disease” are to bring together researchers and faculty across the BU campus focused three overlapping and broad foci of research: (1) continuous brain monitoring, (b) brain fingerprinting, and (c) digital health. A key outcome of this FRP will be to establish Boston University as a focal point of interdisciplinary, translational and data driven research in brain health and brain disease.

Focused Research Program led by

  • Swathi Kiran, Professor, Speech Language and Hearing Sciences, College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (SAR). Dr. Kiran is an expert in the diagnosis of speech, cognitive and language disorders in neurological disorders and has prior experience developing computational models of quantifying neurological disorders.
  • David Boas, Distinguished Professor of Engineering (Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering). Dr. Boas is an expert in Neurophotonics, fNIRS, biomedical optics and physiological modeling. He is a co-PI on a grant that brings together several faculty across BU to participate on continuous measurement through fNIRS.
  • Margrit Betke, Professor of Computer Science, College of Arts and Sciences (CAS). Dr. Betke is the head of the Artificial Intelligence Research (AIR) initiative at BU, which is a cross-disciplinary research initiative focused on machine intelligence within the Hariri Institute. Her expertise is in machine learning approaches and visual image recognition.
  • Prakash Ishwar, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (EECS), College of Engineering. Dr. Ishwar’s expertise is in information theory, information-theoretic security, machine learning, statistical signal processing, and visual information analysis and processing.

Research Thrusts

1. Continuous Brain Monitoring

As part of this thrust, researchers at BU will deploy wireless wearable brain imaging devices that allow measure measurement of brain function in real world settings (e.g., at home) and enable earlier detection of brain disease. There are two sub thrusts: (a) Real-world brain monitoring, and (b) Early detection of brain diseases.

 

2. Brain Fingerprinting

As part of this thrust, researchers are developing novel personalized brain and behavioral markers of neurological dysfunction that can be incorporated into individualized algorithms to predict which brains are healthy or have a chance of recovery relative to which brains are likely to decline. There are two sub thrusts (a) Novel signatures of brain disease, and (b) Individualized prediction models. Both of these overlapping thrusts focus on developing novel biomarkers (behavioral, brain, genetic) that can help differentiate between healthy brains and individuals with various types of neurological disease (e.g., stroke, dementia, traumatic brain injury, epilepsy).

 

3. Digital Health

In thrust #3, researchers developing digital health assessments or mining digital therapeutic data will come together to share ideas about methodologies to accurately diagnose neurological diseases through digital data or provide digital-based therapy at home. Correspondingly, there are two sub thrusts, (a) Digital based diagnosis, and (b) Digital therapeutics. This thrust will also involve partnership with industry as there is an increasing interest in digital diagnosis and therapeutics, especially for individuals with possible/probable dementia.


How to get involved?

For program specific inquiries and questions, please contact FRP leaders: Swathi Kiran, David Boas, Margrit Betke. or Prakash Ishwar. 

Faculty interested in submitting a Focused Research Programs proposal are strongly encouraged to discuss their ideas with Yannis Paschalidis, director of the Hariri Institute for Computing.

To learn more details about the Hariri Institute’s Focused Research Programs, visit here.