BME student receives BHI and BSN travel award

Anis Davoudi, a Ph.D. student in the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, was awarded the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Biomedical and Health Informatics (BHI) and the Body Sensor Networks (BSN) Student Travel Award for her proposal, “Activity and Circadian Rhythm of Sepsis Patients in the Intensive Care Unit.”

Davoudi is under the mentorship of Dr. Rashidi, developing a system for automatic detection of delirium in patients in Intensive Care Units (ICU). About 80% of critically ill and surgical patients suffer from delirium and more than a third of patients that suffer from delirium could benefit from medical interventions, but the current method of detecting delirium requires the ICU nurse to assess the patient using Confusion Assessment Method-Intensive Care Unit (CAM-ICU). This method is time-consuming and does not detect the onset of delirium in real-time. Davoudi’s proposal is to use the facial expressions extracted from the video recorded by Kinect sensor along with the patient’s activity data using an accelerometer. The impact of Davoudi’s research is to enhance the information from a patient’s health record and be able to detect delirium and its subtype in real-time.

BHI and BSN will provide a unique forum to showcase novel sensors, systems, signal processing, analytics and data management services. The presentations will offer the latest findings of researchers on efficient and innovative signal acquisition, transmission, processing, monitoring, storage, retrieval, analysis, visualization and interpretation of multi-modal signals including physiological, biomedical, biological, social, behavioral, environmental and geographical data.

Congratulations, Anis!