Australia to play role in IBM cognitive eye health project

Researchers at IBM Australia will play a role in building a "cognitive assistant" the IT giant hopes will help ophthalmologists diagnose eye conditions from medical image data. The company recruited a batch of research interns to lend their expertise to the project via the IBM Australia research lab in Melbourne. The interns were slated to begin work last month. "IBM research is building the next generation cognitive assistant with advanced multi-media capability for early detection and management of diseases that can affect both the eyes and overall health of a person," the firm said in a now closed advertisement. "We are building the image-guided informatics system that acts as a filter to extract the essential clinical information ophthalmologists need to know about a patient for diagnosis and treatment planning. "This filtering employs sophisticated medical image processing, pattern recognition and machine learning techniques guided by advanced clinical knowledge.