IIT Madras launch cellular level mapping of human brain imaging

India has been making a great deal of progress in the medical fields in the past few years, and a lot of productive research and work is being done toward developing new technologies and tools. It was the first country during the recent pandemic to come up with two indigenous vaccines, and it also led the efforts by the countries which seek an IP waiver for vaccines at the world trade organization (WTO). Several novel other technologies and treatments are being developed, including those for a blood test-based diagnosis for prostate cancer. And the country’s pharma exports saw a mind-blowing increase during the pandemic years.

In yet another such development, a team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) of Madras has started on a very ambitious project that aims at the mapping of human brain imaging at the cellular level. The project aims to generate human brain data, which can be helpful in further scientific research.

According to the director of IIT Madras, Prof V Kamakoti, they have recently launched the Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brian Centre to power a particularly ambitious global project to map the human brain at the cellular and cellular connectivity level with a particular focus on high-resolution brain imaging. “The brain research center is a great case study which proves that technology can contribute to medicine and solve societal problems. The center will make all earnest efforts in collecting data for brain research,” added the professor.

Explaining further, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras director declared that the state-of-the-art center will become a world-renowned research center and will generate unprecedented human brain data and scientific output, and technology tools.

He said that the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras is also planning to train several hundred undergraduate and post-graduate students at the center in related sciences like neuroscience, Neuro-computing, machine learning techniques on cutting edge brain data.

In fact, the Brain Center at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras is going to be supported by Infosys co-founder honorable Kris Gopalakrishnan and his wife, Sudha Gopalakrishnan. Their dedicated efforts in forwarding research at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras at that exciting intersection of neuroscience and engineering have powered this center in the frontier research area of brain mapping.

Prof K Vijay Raghavan commented that this research project on brain image mapping is going to be a revolutionary one as it will help expertise in science and data analysis with medicine. He is a principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India. “Understanding functioning and operation of the complex human brain has been a big challenge to the medical professionals all these years. We are at an earlier state in our understanding of the human brain. I am hopeful that the IIT Madras Brian center will help in solving the various complex problems, and it is expected to benefit the world in the coming days,” he added.

Adding further, experts revealed that the novel technology platform developed at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, along with the several other strong medical collaborations the institute is having, is very likely going to generate high-resolution large-format histology sections for human brains, and this data will advance our knowledge in these fields significantly. “This center will also work on 3D digital neuro-anatomy of the postmortem human brain with cellular resolution. This s a field with great potential for scientific discovery and also for the understanding of neurological disorders,” observed Mohansankar Sivaprakasam. He is the Head of Sudha Gopalan Brain Centre from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras.