Identifying Alzheimer’s using space software

Software for processing satellite pictures taken from space is now helping medical researchers to establish a simple method for wide-scale screening for Alzheimer’s disease.

Used in analysing magnetic resonance images (MRIs), the AlzTools 3D Slicer tool was produced by computer scientists at Spain’s Elecnor Deimos, who drew on years of experience developing software for ESA’s Envisat satellite to create a program that adapted the space routines to analyse human brain scans.

“If you have a space image and you have to select part of an image – a field or crops – you need special routines to extract the information,” explained Carlos Fernández de la Peña of Deimos. “Is this pixel a field, or a road?”

Working for ESA, the team gained experience in processing raw satellite image data by using sophisticated software routines, then homing in on and identifying specific elements.

“Looking at and analysing satellite images can be compared to what medical doctors have to do to understand scans like MRIs,” explained Mr Fernández de la Peña.

"They also need to identify features indicating malfunctions according to specific characteristics.”

Adapting the techniques for analysing complicated space images to an application for medical scientists researching into the Alzheimer disease required close collaboration between Deimos and specialists from the Technical University of Madrid.

The tool is now used for Alzheimer’s research at the Medicine Faculty at the University of Castilla La Mancha in Albacete in Spain.

Space helping medical research

“We work closely with Spanish industry and also with Elecnor Deimos though ProEspacio, the Spanish Association of Space Sector Companies, to support the spin-off of space technologies like this one,” said Richard Seddon from Tecnalia, the technology broker for Spain for ESA’s Technology Transfer Programme.

“Even if being developed for specific applications, we often see that space technologies turn out to provide innovative and intelligent solutions to problems in non-space sectors, such as this one.

“It is incredible to see that the experience and technologies gained from analysing satellite images can help doctors to understand Alzheimer’s disease.”

Using AlzTools, Deimos scientists work with raw data from a brain scan rather than satellite images. Instead of a field or a road in a satellite image, they look at brain areas like the hippocampus, where atrophy is associated with Alzheimer’s.

In both cases, notes Mr Fernández de la Peña, “You have a tonne of data you have to make sense of.”

Houston, We Have Another Problem: Study Shows that Space Travel is Harmful to the Brain

As if space travel was not already filled with enough dangers, a new study out today in the journal PLOS ONE shows that cosmic radiation – which would bombard astronauts on deep space missions to places like Mars – could accelerate the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. 

“Galactic cosmic radiation poses a significant threat to future astronauts,” said M. Kerry O’Banion, M.D., Ph.D., a professor in the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy and the senior author of the study. “The possibility that radiation exposure in space may give rise to health problems such as cancer has long been recognized. However, this study shows for the first time that exposure to radiation levels equivalent to a mission to Mars could produce cognitive problems and speed up changes in the brain that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease.”

While space is full of radiation, the earth’s magnetic field generally protects the planet and people in low earth orbit from these particles. However, once astronauts leave orbit, they are exposed to constant shower of various radioactive particles. With appropriate warning, astronauts can be shielded from dangerous radiation associated with solar flares. But there are also other forms of cosmic radiation that, for all intents and purposes, cannot be effectively blocked.

Because this radiation exists in low levels, the longer an astronaut is in deep space, the greater the exposure. This is a concern for NASA as the agency is planning manned missions to a distant asteroid in 2021 and to Mars in 2035. The round trip to the red planet, in particular, could take as long as three years. 

For over 25 years, NASA has been funding research to determine the potential health risks of space travel in an effort to both develop countermeasures and determine whether or not the risks warranted sending men and women on extended missions in deep space.  

Since that time, several studies have demonstrated the potential cancer, cardiovascular, and musculoskeletal impact of galactic cosmic radiation. The study out today for the first time examines the potential impact of space radiation on neurodegeneration, in particular, the biological processes in the brain that contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s disease. O’Banion – whose research focuses on how radiation affects the central nervous system – and his team have been working with NASA for over eight years.

The researchers studied the impact of a particular form of radiation called high-mass, high-charged (HZE) particles. These particles – which are propelled through space at very high speeds by the force of exploding stars – come in many different forms. For this study the researcher chose iron particles. Unlikely hydrogen protons, which are produced by solar flares, the mass of HZE particles like iron, combined with their speed, enable them to penetrate solid objects such as the wall and protective shielding of a spacecraft. 

“Because iron particles pack a bigger wallop it is extremely difficult from an engineering perspective to effectively shield against them,” said O’Banion. “One would have to essentially wrap a spacecraft in a six-foot block of lead or concrete.”

Biologists try to engineer life that can survive on Mars and aid colonisation

With Nasa’s Curiosity Rover safely on Mars and ready to search for signs of life, back on Earth attempts are underway to engineer bacteria that could thrive on the Red Planet.

A team of undergraduates from Stanford and Brown Universities are busy applying synthetic biology to space exploration, outfitting microbes to survive extreme Martian conditions and produce resources needed to sustain a human colony.

Though Mars is potentially a place where life may have survived at some point, it is not an especially friendly environment, and thriving there will not be easy — for humans or microbes. The average surface temperature of Mars is minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and the almost-nonexistent atmosphere is 95 percent carbon dioxide. Although water exists in Mars’ ice caps and there’s some evidence that giant oceans once covered the planet, today it’s essentially a deep-frozen desert. Colonising Mars would be challenging and pricey.

Soon, space robots like Curiosity may evolve even greater intelligence

After more than eight years of planning and a 254-day journey through the cold emptiness of space, NASA’s Curiosity rover has finally landed on Mars.  Curiosity is the most advanced mobile robotic science lab to ever explore another planet and thus this is an exciting moment for NASA and the world.

But robotics and artificial intelligence continue to advance at an exponential rate. As we look towards the future of space exploration in the next decade and beyond, we can expect the next generation of space robots to be orders of magnitude more powerful and intelligent, while at the same time costing a fraction of Curiosity’s $2.5 billion price tag.

Neuroscientist keeps astronauts awake with ISS lighting tweaks

A neuroscientist is working with Nasa to develop special lamps that could help restore the circadian rhythm of exhausted astronauts working aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Thomas Jefferson University neuroscientist George C Brainard, who has headed up the university’s Light Research Program since 1984, received approval for the lights in early 2012 and 100 of the LED models are due to be sent to Nasa by mid-2015. The lights have three different colour temperatures to help ease the astronauts into morning, nighttime and normal working mode.

"An astronaut here on Earth experiences a 24-hour day/night cycle just like you and I," explained Brainard. "Now when they’re on the space station, they’re circling the planet every 90 minutes. So they’ve gone from a 24-hour day to a 90-minute day."