IIT AIIMS Jodhpur researchers tap AI to better assess malnutrition in children

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology IIT and All India Institute of Medical Science AIIMS Jodhpur have leveraged the power of artificial intelligence AI to better identify childhood malnutritionThe new method published in the openaccess journal MICCAI addresses one of the most pressing global health challenges the accurate and scalable assessment of childhood malnutritionThe study introduced DomainAdapt a novel multitasks learning framework that dynamically adjusts task weights using domain knowledge and mutual informationThis allows the system to more accurately predict key anthropometric measures such as height weight and midupper arm circumference MUAC while simultaneously classifying malnutritionrelated conditions such as stunting wasting and underweightWhile these measures are also assessed using the traditional screening methods they pose challenges in terms of the subjectivity of the worker the timeconsuming process of measuring each aspect one by one and the lack of scalabilityldquoBy simply capturing photos of a child our framework can estimate nutritional status without the need for complex and timeconsuming anthropometric measurementsrdquo explained Misaal Khan a doctoral student in medical technology at IITAIIMS who led the studyldquoThis makes malnutrition screening faster more accessible and highly scalable especially in resourcelimited settingsrdquo Khan addedFurther a cornerstone of the research is AnthroVision a firstofitskind dataset containing 16938 multipose images from 2141 children collected across both clinical AIIMS Jodhpur and community government schools in Rajasthan settingsThe dataset captures diverse backgrounds clothing and lighting conditions making it a robust resource for advancing automated child health assessmentThrough rigorous experimentation DomainAdapt demonstrated significant improvements over existing multitask learning methods offering a reliable AIdriven solution to accelerate malnutrition detection worldwideldquoThis research represents a vital step toward equitable healthcare accessrdquo said KhanldquoBy blending AI and domain expertise we can empower healthcare workers and public health systems with tools that are costeffective accurate and scalablerdquo she addedThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever