The goal of the research is to reduce the burden of dementia by developing novel, AI-based tools to support healthcare professionals in their diagnosis and offering timely interventions to patients.
There are over 50 million people worldwide living with dementia and by 2030 this number is expected to reach 82 million. Current treatment options consist of time-consuming patient examinations and focus on late symptom treatment.
The AI-Mind project aims to develop a screening method driven by artificial intelligence to address the need for early and accurate diagnosis and prediction in humans affected by MCI.
MCI (mild cognitive impairment) is a mild failure of cognitive functions and a condition that can often be an early sign of dementia. For people with MCI, the risk of dementia is almost 30 percent higher than people without. We therefore need effective diagnostic tools for early dementia risk assessment and follow-up of people with MCI.
The project is led by Oslo University Hospital (OuS) and has a total of 15 partners from eight European countries. The goal is to facilitate a paradigm shift in clinical practice, and during the five years, two new digital tools based on artificial intelligence will be developed.
AI-Mind Connector will be able to identify dysfunctional networks in the brain, and AI-Mind Predictor will assess the risk of dementia using data from Connector, advanced cognitive tests and genetic biomarkers.
These two tools will be integrated into an intelligent diagnostic platform to identify disorders of the brain network and the risk of dementia, and then create personalized patient reports.
OsloMet AI Lab and Aalto University are responsible for developing machine learning tools and deep learning models that will be implemented in AI-Mind Connector and Predictor. Anis Yazidi will lead this part of the project, in which Pedro Lind and Stefano Nichele also have a role.