Jason Acker – uses AI to analyze red blood cells

Canadian researchers report that “a red blood cell lasts about 115 days in the human body and the shape of the RBC reveals its age. Newer, healthier RBCs are shaped like discs with smooth edges. As they age, those edges become jagged and the cell eventually transforms into a sphere and loses the ability to perform its duty of transporting oxygen throughout the body.” Consequently, these scientists used artificial intelligence to defining aging in red blood cells: “To perform the study, [they] first collected and manually categorized 52,000 red blood cell images. Those images were then used to train an algorithm that mimics the way a human mind works. The computer system was next tasked with analyzing the shape of RBCs for quality purposes.”   MORE

Image Credit:  University of Alberta