Feb
I recently photographed for Microsoft with the brilliant journalist, Allison Linn who is their Senior writer, editor and multimedia storyteller. We were covering a research project at the Microsoft Centre in Cambridge.
When Microsoft released the Kinect system for playing Xbox video games about five years ago, it attracted the interest of an unlikely source: the healthcare company Novartis.
To try to quantify the progress of multiple sclerosis, doctors have developed astandard set of tests they perform. Doctors watch the patient and then use a rating scale to determine how strong the patient’s symptoms are. However, doctors are only human, and despite all their best efforts to standardize the MS test, in the end it is subjective.
That’s why the possibility of using computer vision, which is the type of technology found in the Kinect system, was so intriguing. Using a tool like the Kinect, the researchers at Novartis figured they could get a more consistent reading of how a patient performed on each of the tests, bringing a new level of uniformity that would help doctors better assess the progress of the disease. That, in turn, could speed up the process of getting the right treatments to patients.
Microsoft researchers have long been at the cutting edge of a field called machine learning, which is a branch of artificial intelligence in which systems get better at doing something as they gather more data. Machine learning is ideal for a project like Assess MS because, as the computer vision system captures more recordings of patient movements, it can deliver more consistent results showing the disease’s progression. It was a collaboration between doctor, patient and technology.
Ultimately, the researchers hope that Novartis and other pharmaceutical companies can use Assess MS to speed up clinical trials for multiple sclerosis, and perhaps, eventually, for other, similar diseases as well.
You can read the complete article at
