Hoan Ngo Laboratory
Precision and Accessible Diagnostics and AI for Health
Motivation
Infectious diseases affect billions of people worldwide and cause millions of deaths every year even before the Covid-19 pandemic. On the other hand, millions of people worldwide suffer and die from cancer and Alzheimer’s disease every year. However, nowadays, many people, especially people living in rural areas or in resource-limited settings, still face barriers in getting access to medical diagnosis due to physical distance, cost, etc. Meanwhile, there is a great need for tools that can detect cancer and Alzheimer’s diseases at early stages which are critical to improving cancer treatment outcome and to the development of effective drugs for the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
Research Goals
Our research goal is to develop novel instruments and advanced algorithms including AIs for disease understanding, diagnostics, intervention support, and improving access to healthcare. Specifically, we am interested in:
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Developing AI models and AI-powered low-cost devices for early detection, diagnostics, and supporting treatment of cancer (e.g., response prediction) via digital pathology.
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Developing AI models and AI-powered low-cost devices for early detection, diagnostics, and supporting treatment of Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases.
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Developing AI models (e.g., vision language models) that can analyze large multi-modal data for insights into the root causes and pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease and cancer for disease prevention and drug development.
Current Research Projects
Below are our current research projects
Cancer Diagnostic
We are developing a low-cost smartphone-based system powered by AI for thyroid cancer diagnostic in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
Collaborator: Professor Walter Lee, MD, Duke University School of Medicine.
Alzheimer's Disease Understanding & Screening
We are developing AI-powered systems for understanding, screening, diagnostic, and prognosis of Alzheimer’s disease using brain MRI, retinal scan, speech data, etc.
Collaborator: Dr. Ha Thi Thanh Huong and Dr. Ngo Thi Lua, Vietnam National University - Ho Chi Minh City.
Psoriasis Severity Assessment
We are developing an AI-powered application for psoriasis severity indexing using smartphone
captured images.
Collaborator: Professor Scott Elman, MD, University of Miami Miller
School of Medicine.