Kiourti’s NIH grant aims to improve stroke diagnosis

Asimina Kiourti, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at The Ohio State University, leads a team that earned a National Institutes of Health (NIH) R03 grant to advance stroke diagnostics.

The grant is for a two-year, $160,000 effort to investigate “High Resolution Microwave Tomographic Imaging of Brain Strokes Using Low-Frequency Measurements and Deep Neural Networks”. The goal is to create a handheld device for medical professionals that uses microwave imaging to identify brain strokes as quickly as possible.

Kiourti’s team will develop a device that can be used at the location where a person experiences a brain stroke, rather than taking them to the hospital, leading to quicker diagnosis and better health outcomes. Currently to identify brain stroke, patients must go to the hospital and get an MRI or CT scan. The team will explore advances in microwave imaging to improve resolution of the brain scans in the pre-hospital environment.

“There is a need to have more accurate imaging as early as possible in the process of treating a stroke to avoid major health consequences,” said Kiourti, who is a faculty affiliate of the ElectroScience Laboratory (ESL) and the Chronic Brain Injury program. “The aim is for clinicians to be able to use an imaging device to figure out the type and size of stroke a patient has had and quickly determine the clinical approach to treatment.”

This is a new line of research for Kiourti. She currently develops wearable and implantable technology (WIT) with her research group at ESL.

Yousef Hannawi, assistant professor of neurology and faculty affiliate of the Chronic Brain Injury program, is a co-investigator on the project. Visiting Scholar Md Asiful Islam, who received his PhD and conducted research on microwave imaging at Ohio State, is also serving as senior personnel on the research team. To get more accurate imaging, Islam employed machine learning and estimated higher frequency microwave data from low frequency microwave measurements. The team has the capability to use that data for higher resolution microwave imaging.

“This research covers the broad area of microwave imaging and has several different approaches to get to the end discovery. We have goals to remain involved in the field to investigate the other approaches,” said Kiourti .

NIH R03 grants fund research at early stages that show promise from both a clinical and technology development standpoint. Research must be tightly focused and faces stiff competition to win the funding.

from Ohio State's ElectroScience Laboratory staff