The International Conference on Computational Methods in Science and Engineering (ICCMSE) will be held from October 26th in Crete and will host two minisymposiums on the progress of the European PERSIST initiative led by Gradiant and developed together with its partners. On the first day of the event will feature two mini-symposia. The first, given by a team from Gradiant, is entitled: “Multichannel Fluorescence Microscopy Images CTC Detection: A Deep Learning Approach” and will be held at 16.00 hours. The second will be given by a team from the consortium partners and is entitled: “PERSIST Project: Data collection and usability clinical study results”. It will be at 16.30 in the afternoon. Both exhibitions are integrated in the panel: “Digital Health Interventions Big Data for Personalized Cancer Survivorship”.
PERSIST will showcase at ICCMSE 2022 the latest advances in the detection of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) using Deep Learning techniques. Among the different lines of research within PERSIST, we find the study of liquid biopsy images for the detection of CTCs, an important biomarker for the diagnosis of a possible relapse in cancer.
The current process involves manual evaluation of liquid biopsy microscope images. This manual process is a considerable time investment. “At PERSIST, we have developed an alternative process. Through a device developed by our partners RUBY nanomed and aided by AI techniques, we managed to automate this process. Thus, we managed to perform it around 70 times faster than the manual evaluation procedure,” explains Ignacio Serrano from Gradiant in Crete.
PERSIST, technology to improve the fight against cancer
PERSIST is a European partnership that aims to transform the quality of life of people who have survived cancer. There are a number of unmet needs of these survivors. To this end, we developed a solution with the aim of making AI and Big Data technologies suitable for use by healthcare professionals. This solution incorporates a clinical decision support system based on new health data analysis models. In addition, the mHealth system will remotely monitor each patient on a personalised basis. The PERSIST consortium partners are developing a Big Data platform that integrates the two previous systems and will be connected to the medical record systems of any hospital. A transnational clinical study has been carried out involving more than 150 patients and 32 healthcare professionals from four different countries. The results will be available in the coming months. In this way, PERSIST is working to achieve high quality healthcare where personalisation of treatment and care plans for surviving patients are key. In addition, this solution will also lead to a reduction in the costs currently incurred for this disease.
The PERSIST consortium
PERSIST is a European project that started in 2020 and will end in February 2023. Led by Gradiant, PERSIST involves 13 entities from 10 countries: SERGAS e DXC Technology (Spain); Univerza Mariboru and Univerzitetni Klinicni Center Maribor (Slovenia); Haute Ecole Specialisée De Suisse (Switzerland); Latvijas Universitate (Latvia); Cyberethics Lab (Italy); Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Liège (Belgium); Symptoma (Austria); Rubynanomed (Portugal); National Patients’ Organization (Bulgaria); and Emoda (Turkey). The PERSIST programme has been funded by the European Union with more than €5 million under the Horizon 2020 programme.
