Duarte Saraiva, LASIGE PhD Student, was awarded a PhD FCT grant Maria de Sousa – 2022 SEAGULL – Seeking Epidemiological and Virological Answers, one of ten scholarships awarded, in November 2022.

Nuno Garcia, LASIGE integrated member, and Hugo Ferreira (IBEB) are the supervisors of his thesis entitled “Development of an artificial intelligence-based assisted navigation and diagnosis solution for pulmonary point-of-care ultrasound”.

His research addresses the following: “Physicians can use point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) to quickly monitor and diagnose pulmonary infections. The operational complexity of POCUS, which requires expert knowledge and training to be effective, limits its widespread use. What if we could automatically guide an inexperienced user in positioning a POCUS probe for image analysis and provide him with a diagnostic and severity score suggestion? This project will focus on developing that kind of solution. Deep learning algorithms will be developed to aid in the ultrasound probe’s navigation and positioning, as well as to perform an automatic diagnosis. The developed solution will be tested with our partner Hospital Garcia de Orta (HGO). This technology will speed up and reduce the cost of diagnosing and monitoring pulmonary infections. Critical social impact is also expected, due to the applicability of this project to remote places lacking access to hospitals and specialists, unfavorable social-economic contexts, and crises like pandemics.”

To the PhD FCT grant Maria de Sousa – 2022 SEAGULL Call there were 42 candidates for the competition, of which 37 met the requirements for evaluation. The 10 grants to be awarded correspond to a success rate of 27% of the evaluation applications.