Dennis Fernandez

Carlos Rojas-Azabache, Karen Vilca-Janampa, Renzo Guerrero-Huayta et al.

The COVID-19 pandemic started in China in December 2019 and quickly spread to several countries. The consequences of this pandemic are incalculable, causing the death of millions of people and damaging the global economy. To achieve large-scale control of this pandemic, fast tools for detection and treatment of patients are needed. Thus, the demand for alternative tools for the diagnosis of COVID-19 has increased dramatically since accurated and automated tools are not available. In this paper we present the ongoing work on a system for COVID-19 detection using ultrasound imaging and using Deep Learning techniques. Furthermore, such a system is implemented on a Raspberry Pi to make it portable and easy to use in remote regions without an Internet connection.

Carlos Rojas-Azabache, Karen Vilca-Janampa, Renzo Guerrero-Huayta et al.

The new coronavirus 2019 (COVID-2019) has rapidly become a pandemic and has had a devastating effect on both everyday life, public health and the global economy. It is critical to detect positive cases as early as possible to prevent the further spread of this epidemic and to treat affected patients quickly. The need for auxiliary diagnostic tools has increased as accurate automated tool kits are not available. This paper presents a work in progress that proposes the analysis of images of lung ultrasound scans using a convolutional neural network. The trained model will be used on a Raspberry Pi to predict on new images.

Dennis Núñez-Fernández, Lamberto Ballan, Gabriel Jiménez-Avalos et al.

One of the most serious public health problems in Peru and worldwide is Tuberculosis (TB), which is produced by a bacterium known as Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The purpose of this work is to facilitate and automate the diagnosis of tuberculosis using the MODS method and using lens-free microscopy, as it is easier to calibrate and easier to use by untrained personnel compared to lens microscopy. Therefore, we employed a U-Net network on our collected data set to perform automatic segmentation of cord shape bacterial accumulation and then predict tuberculosis. Our results show promising evidence for automatic segmentation of TB cords, and thus good accuracy for TB prediction.

Dennis Núñez Fernández, Franklin Barrientos Porras, Robert H. Gilman et al.

Early diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is known to improve the quality of life of affected individuals. However, diagnosis is often delayed even in wealthier countries including the US, largely due to the fact that gold standard diagnostic tools such as the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) and the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) are time consuming and require expertise to administer. This trend is even more pronounced lower resources settings due to a lack of trained experts. As a result, alternative, less technical methods that leverage the unique ways in which children with ASD react to visual stimulation in a controlled environment have been developed to help facilitate early diagnosis. Previous studies have shown that, when exposed to a video that presents both social and abstract scenes side by side, a child with ASD will focus their attention towards the abstract images on the screen to a greater extent than a child without ASD. Such differential responses make it possible to implement an algorithm for the rapid diagnosis of ASD based on eye tracking against different visual stimuli. Here we propose a convolutional neural network (CNN) algorithm for gaze prediction using images extracted from a one-minute stimulus video. Our model achieved a high accuracy rate and robustness for prediction of gaze direction with independent persons and employing a different camera than the one used during testing. In addition to this, the proposed algorithm achieves a fast response time, providing a near real-time evaluation of ASD. Thereby, by applying the proposed method, we could significantly reduce the diagnosis time and facilitate the diagnosis of ASD in low resource regions.

Dennis Núñez-Fernández, Lamberto Ballan, Gabriel Jiménez-Avalos et al.

Tuberculosis (TB), caused by a germ called Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is one of the most serious public health problems in Peru and the world. The development of this project seeks to facilitate and automate the diagnosis of tuberculosis by the MODS method and using lens-free microscopy, due they are easier to calibrate and easier to use (by untrained personnel) in comparison with lens microscopy. Thus, we employ a U-Net network in our collected dataset to perform the automatic segmentation of the TB cords in order to predict tuberculosis. Our initial results show promising evidence for automatic segmentation of TB cords.

Dennis Núñez-Fernández, Lamberto Ballan, Gabriel Jiménez-Avalos et al.

Tuberculosis, caused by a bacteria called Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is one of the most serious public health problems worldwide. This work seeks to facilitate and automate the prediction of tuberculosis by the MODS method and using lens-free microscopy, which is easy to use by untrained personnel. We employ the CapsNet architecture in our collected dataset and show that it has a better accuracy than traditional CNN architectures.

Bryan Saldivar-Espinoza, Dennis Núñez-Fernández, Franklin Porras-Barrientos et al.

Anemia is a major health burden worldwide. Examining the hemoglobin level of blood is an important way to achieve the diagnosis of anemia, but it requires blood drawing and a blood test. In this work we propose a non-invasive, fast, and cost-effective screening test for iron-deficiency anemia in Peruvian young children. Our initial results show promising evidence for detecting conjunctival pallor anemia and Artificial Intelligence techniques with photos taken with a popular smartphone.

Dennis Núñez-Fernández, Franklin Porras-Barrientos, Macarena Vittet-Mondoñedo et al.

Autism is a developmental disorder that affects social interaction and communication of children. The gold standard diagnostic tools are very difficult to use and time consuming. However, diagnostic could be deduced from child gaze preferences by looking a video with social and abstract scenes. In this work, we propose an algorithm based on convolutional neural networks to predict gaze direction for a fast and effective autism diagnosis. Early results show that our algorithm achieves real-time response and robust high accuracy for prediction of gaze direction.

Dennis Núñez Fernández

Demand of hand pose recognition systems are growing in the last years in technologies like human-machine interfaces. This work suggests an approach for hand pose recognition in embedded computers using hand tracking and CNNs. Results show a fast time response with an accuracy of 94.50% and low power consumption.