Singular Health Group Ltd (ASX: SHG), in collaboration with Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, have successfully concluded a Cranial Implant Design project.
The project was made possible by CSIRO Kick-Start, an initiative that provides funding and support for innovative Australian start-ups and small businesses to access CSIRO’s research expertise and capabilities to help grow and develop their business.
Having developed and integrated an Artificial Intelligence (AI) model capable of automatically generating a cranial implant within four minutes with a 91% level of accuracy, the focus now turns to the collaboration with ASX-listed Osteopore to validate the model and seek US FDA and Australia TGA certification.
Since the initial announcement of the second Kick-Start project in October 2021, Singular Health’s research and innovation team has worked closely with CSIRO to use a publicly available dataset of craniotomy CT scans to train a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) AI model to generate a cranial implant.
Compared to models developed as part of the AutoImplant 2021 Grand Challenge, the SHG-CSIRO AI model surpasses all previous models with an accuracy of greater than 91 per cent and an inference time of less than four minutes.
Upon completion of the AI model, Singular Health’s internal development team have configured the model to use standard DICOM inputs to work across both Windows and MacOS hardware, and to output the generated cranial implant design into the Company’s 3Dicom Surgical software.
Whilst in 3Dicom Surgical, the cranial implant can be edited in either the 2D or 3D views by a surgeon or bioengineer to make patient specific edits and increase the accuracy to near 100%.
Furthermore, recent developments to the 3Dicom Surgical software has added the ability to export manual or AI segmented anatomies or pathologies to 3D printable file formats such as .STL or .OBJ, completing the Scan to Surgery workflow.
Comparative Study with Osteopore
Singular Health will be receiving anonymised craniotomy CT scans from Osteopore for an initial validation of the AI model prior to securing FDA and TGA approved datasets.
The AI model and 3Dicom Surgical workflow will then be compared to existing workflows and evaluated based on relative time and accuracy of the model.
Singular Health’s CEO, Thomas Hanly, said the main objective of this project is to collate empirical data to develop a pathway to full FDA approval for the AI model and deployment for use with Osteopore’s cutting-edge bioresorbable material
“I have to highly commend the innovative development and work ethic of the CSIRO team. This best-in-class model, compared to the 2021 AutoImplant Grand Challenge, really demonstrates the ability of AI to accelerate the manual processes in the Scan to Surgery workflow. I now look forward to working closely with Osteopore to develop a commercial outcome for both companies,” Mr Hanly said.
