NFS CAREER grant investigates neuromuscular disorder diagnosis
block
Associate Professor Benjamin Sanchez Terrones received a National Science Foundation CAREER award for his research into improving the diagnosis of neuromuscular disorders by developing better ways to evaluate the health of the muscle.
Injuries or conditions that affect the health of the muscle afflict about 1.7 billion people worldwide, or roughly 25% of the world’s population. In the U.S., about 57 million people are afflicted with musculoskeletal disabilities, accounting for roughly one in five disability claims.
Injuries and disease can interfere with muscle contraction, resulting in a loss of force. But measuring the loss of force alone has limitations, as this measurement is subjective and can be difficult to isolate or measure. Observation alone is also often not enough.
“A combination of technologies can provide you with a broader picture of what the health of the muscle may be,” Sanchez Terrones said.
Sanchez Terrones is combining physical models with artificial intelligence to measure the health of the muscle with electricity. Sensors are placed on the skin over the muscle or region of interest, and an electrical current is sent, and the response of the muscle is measured. Features that are signatures of the muscle, such as how many viable muscle fibers are present, or if fat disposition is detected between muscle fibers, can be quantified.
Sanchez Terrones is using AI to go deeper into the biology of why different diseases or injuries cause different electrical signals and compare the differences to healthy individuals to get a better understanding of the underlying biology of various musculoskeletal disabilities.
Sanchez Terrones has proposed three research tenets to guide his work. He is integrating the physical knowledge into the process of analyzing the data, using this knowledge to predict the recovery of the muscle, and how that will evolve over time, and evaluating the robustness of the model, to ensure outcomes are biologically meaningful.
“We want to establish the scientific underpinnings and advance the technology beyond the current stage,” Sanchez Terrones said. “Eventually, this may be used to guide injury treatment and prevention.”
Sanchez Terrones is also an affiliate faculty member in the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Biomedical Engineering.