Micha Feigin-Almon
Research Scientist, MIT Mechanical Engineering

SENSE.nano 2021
Tuesday, October 26
Session 4: Specimens and biopsies
3:40 PM - 3:55 PM EDT

Abstract
Assessing muscle health and muscle function is essential for diagnostics of a multitude of musculoskeletal and neurological afflictions. These encompass such conditions as degenerative muscle diseases, muscle atrophy due to bed rest or neurological conditions, return to play after muscle injuries, and neurological related conditions such as traumatic brain injuries, neurological afflictions, and spasticity.

Currently, there are no imaging solutions capable of assessing muscle health and function during dynamic motion. This means that we either try to extrapolate the required information from images at rest, and/or resort to alternate methods including clinical examination, electrophysiological methods (Electromyography - EMG), and biomechanical methods. Feigin-Almon will present a novel ultrasound-based imaging solution capable of assessing muscle function in motion. To this end, he utilizes a deep-learning approach applied to pre-imaging raw ultrasound signals to recover speed of sound maps in tissue. Feigin-Almon will show that these can provide interactive, real-time, functional full-slice EMG-like images.

Biography
Dr. Feigin-Almon is a research scientist at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) at MIT. The focus for Dr. Feigin-Almon’s research encompasses the area of assessing motion and function, and their relation to musculoskeletal and neurological health. Most of his work in this domain centers on using deep learning approaches to accelerate the application of seismic approaches to raw ultrasound signals and understanding the information that can be garnered from this marriage.