Advances in Imaging for Autism Detection

Admittedly, I am a sucker for touch-screen technology. Still, if you haven’t seen the Digital Lightbox yet from BrainLAB, you should take a look. It offers the ability to simultaneously access and manipulate images from various modalities, and has a look and features that I imagine would appeal to anyone’s inner geek. I took a peek at BrainLAB’s tradeshow schedule, and it looks like next month they will be attending CNS in Orlando, AAO-HNSF in Chicago, and ASTRO in Boston, in case anyone is thinking of attending one of those conferences. If you’re interested in seeing the system in action, Medgadget has posted a largely silent video on YouTube.

I also find it interesting that imaging is being investigated for early detection of autism. The multi-disciplinary researchers are using 3-D representations of brain structures and facial features with technology under development in the University of Missouri-Columbia’s Computer Graphics and Image Understanding Lab, and will focus on two autism spectrum disorder subgroups — complex and essential autism - identified by Judith Miles, M.D., Ph.D., the William Thompson Endowed Chair in Autism, Division of Medical Genetics, at University of Missouri Health Care.

The Computer Graphics and Image Understand Lab, run by Ye Duan, Ph.D., has a variety of different projects underway, including medical image analysis and a brain data explorer/information miner. Yet another way to satisfy your inner geek is to read about 3-D face recognition algorithms. Seriously, some of us really do want to know about these things.

Someday, somehow, we’ll have a breakthrough that will enable our society to move past the suspicions surrounding vaccinations and autism that continue to make the news. It’s too bad that all the good work that is going on isn’t as available for mainstream consumption.