James S.J. Lee, PhD, former Vice President, Research & Development, Neopath (merged to become TriPath Imaging) - Fuzzy Models for Cervical Cytology Primary Screening (the Neopath Autopap system was the first and only system to ever receive FDA approval for primary (no human assistance required) screening of cancerous Pap smears)

Nassib Chamoun, CEO, Aspect Medical Systems - The Role of System Identification in the Bispectral Index and its Use in Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease

Description:
Medical Diagnostics refers to testing conducted either in vitro or in vivo to provide critical health care information for risk assessment, early diagnosis, treatment, or disease management.  Typical in vitro diagnostic tests include the cholesterol, Papanicolaou (Pap) smear, and conventional glucose monitoring tests.  Typical in vivo diagnostic tests include the computed tomography scan, magnetic resonance imaging, and blood pressure screening.  Historically, devices associated with both types of diagnostics have used heuristic curve fitting during signal analysis.  However, since the early 1990s, a few enterprising engineers and physicians have used system theory to improve their core processing for feature detection and system identification.  Current applications include automated Pap smear screening for detection of cervical cancer and diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease.  Future applications, such as disease prediction before symptom onset and medication effect prediction, have been catalyzed by the Human Genome Project.

The goal of this minisymposium is to review the early work in this emerging field, which has led to technology breakthroughs, and to introduce graduate students to this industrial career path. The presentations would be followed by a panel discussion.