Qingyu Chen, PhD, an Assistant Professor at BIDS, has been awarded a prestigious grant from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for groundbreaking research project titled “Natural language processing and medical imaging analysis for multi-modality computer assisted diagnosis of ophthalmic diseases.” The award, totaling $746,960 over a three-year period (Grant Number: 4R00LM014024-03), will facilitate the development and evaluation of cutting-edge AI models designed to enhance the accuracy and reliability of eye disease diagnoses.
Project Overview
As AI technology continues to transform healthcare, this project seeks to harness its potential to improve patient outcomes in ophthalmology. Running from September 2024, through August 2027, the project has three key objectives:
- Clinical Concept Recognition: Developing advanced NLP methods for recognizing and normalizing clinical concepts from physician notes.
- Integrated AI Models: Creating AI models using different data modalities to facilitate accurate diagnoses of eye diseases.
- Model Accountability: Investigating strategies to enhance the accountability of AI models through external validations, subgroup analyses, and extending their applicability to diseases beyond ophthalmology.
Innovative Approach
Dr. Chen’s research promises to transform ophthalmic care by making AI-assisted diagnosis more effective and generalizable. The methodologies developed will contribute to the field of AI in medicine, advancing not only eye disease diagnostics but also setting a framework for improving diagnostic tools in other medical areas.
Using NLP to extract important information from free-text notes can enhance medical image-based disease diagnosis. This integration of multi-modality AI can potentially lead to more effective and reliable diagnoses for patients, improving outcomes in ophthalmic care and beyond.
Qingyu Chen, PhD