Immersive Visualization of Dengue Vector Breeding Sites Extracted  from Street View Images

Dengue is considered one of the most serious global health burdens. The primary vector of dengue is the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which has adapted to human habitats and breeds primarily in artificial containers that can contain water. Control of dengue relies on effective mosquito vector control, for which detection and mapping of potential breeding sites is essential.  The two traditional approaches to this have been to use satellite images, which do not provide sufficient resolution to detect a large proportion of the breeding sites, and manual counting, which is too labor-intensive to be used on a routine basis over large areas.  Our recent work has addressed this problem by applying convolutional neural nets to detect outdoor containers representing potential breeding sites in Google street view images. More ...

 

Added-value of Mosquito Vector Breeding Sites from Street View Images in the Risk Mapping of Dengue Incidence in Thailand

 

The primary dengue mosquito vectors breed in containers with sufficient water and nutrition. Outdoor containers can be detected from geotagged images using state-of-the-art deep learning methods.  Eight breeding site container types in Google street view images are detected using convolutional neural networks. We investigate the added value of including container information from geotagged images in predicting dengue risk. To explain the target variable dengue incidence, weather variables are added to complement the container variable predictors. More ...

 

 

Effects of COVID-19 Government Travel Restrictions on Mobility in a Rural Border Area of Northern Thailand: A Mobile Phone Tracking Study

 

Thailand is among the top five countries with effective COVID-19 transmission control.   This study examines how news of presence of COVID-19 in Thailand, as well as varying levels of government restriction on movement, affected human mobility in a rural Thai population along the border with Myanmar. More ...

 

WingBeats - A Deep Learning-based Mosquito Species and Gender Classification System

 

Diseases transmitted by mosquitoes such as malaria, dengue, West Nile fever, and most recently Zika Fever are amongst the biggest healthcare concerns across the globe today. In Thailand, Aedes. aegypti, Ae. albopictus are the primary vectors of dengue and  Annopheles. dirus, An. minimus, the primary vectors for malaria. To tackle such life-threatening diseases, it is vital to evaluate the risk of transmission. More ...

 

 

Intelligent Tutoring System for Surgical Decision Making

The intelligent tutoring system uses AI plan representation techniques to reason about surgical procedures in order to generate rich tutorial dialog to provide students with an understanding of the essential causal relations and perceptual cues relevant to making well-considered decisions. The system is able to replicate a number of teaching strategies observed in the operating room, including particularly challenging types of tutorial dialog such as posing hypothetical situations. More...

 
   

Spatial Cognition in Surgical Practice

Laparoscopic surgery, also known as 'keyhole surgery', has proven highly advantageous for the patient compared to more conventional open surgery. Nonetheless, the minimally invasive nature of the laparoscopic technique imposes a set of unique spatial cognitive challenges that render this procedure notoriously difficult to acquire and master. Although the importance of spatial cognition in laparoscopic learning has already been established, the existing literature does not (or only partially) address many salient questions. Among others, it remains largely unclear 1) which specific spatial abilities influence laparoscopic technical skill learning, 2) how these abilities develop to shape surgical technical mastery over an extended period of time, 3) how these abilities develop in actual surgeons training in intraoperative environments, and 4) whether any individual and/or situational factors other than spatial abilities (e.g. surgeon-specific/institutional) exert any significant influence on the development of laparoscopic skills? The project at hand will address these questions by longitudinally tracking novice surgeons spatial abilities and technical laparoscopic skills over a two-year period. In doing so, this project will break new ground not only by shedding new light on the malleability of spatial abilities and theories of skill acquisition in surgical learning but also by providing new data pertinent to improving surgical education.  More...

 

 

Intelligent Virtual Environments for Surgical Training Study Group 

The teaching of surgical skills, which has traditionally followed an apprentice-style approach, is now facing a number of challenges that are driving medical schools to seek alternatives. Increasing enrollments combined with constraints on the time of expert surgeons means that students often do not receive as much supervised training as would be desirable. Students end up spending a significant portion of their training time carrying out the unsupervised practice. Even when the assessment is carried out, it is by nature subjective, lacking sufficient standardization. More...

 

Understanding the Role of Human Mobility in Malaria Transmission

In low transmission settings, it is believed that human migration plays a major role in malaria transmission and even in the emergence of drug resistance.  Malaria infections may show up in low incidence areas because people become infected during the time spent in high-risk areas.  In the case of northern Thailand, mobility may be due to normal daily patterns, labor migration, and seeking of refuge.  It is known that a significant factor in malaria transmission in Thailand along the border with Myanmar is due to cross border migration, largely due to seeking labor.  While attempts have been made to understand movement patterns through systematic interviews, answers depend on the subject’s memory and thus the data may not be accurate and precise.  In addition, the approach is too labor intensive to practically collect data from large groups.  A more precise approach is to use a GPS device to collect mobility data.  This provides not only locations visited but also precise durations spent and time of day, which is important in mosquito biting behavior.  More...

 

Vascular Access Training Simulator

Central venous catheter insertion is intended to provide medical treatment, such as in order to quickly deliver large amounts of water, in order to provide high concentration drugs and to monitor the signs of hemodynamics. One of the important steps of inserting a vein catheter is to enter the vein properly. The practice of training for medical students currently has a number of limitations. Manikin training has disadvantages of lack of realism, deterioration of the manikin from training, and the lack of adequate feedback for self-evaluation, thus requiring a trainer to evaluate. Practicing with patients has the risk of incorrect insertion of the needle, such as piercing arteries or other organs in the vicinity. More...

 
   

Completed projects