I have always been fascinated by the microscopic world of organisms – either through a camera lens or under a microscope.

We were presented with an opportunity to quantify the locomotive characteristics of Caenorhabditis elegans (c.elegans, a nematode) using a digital microscope.

C.elegans, a multicellular organism, has approximately 1200 olfactory receptor-like genes, compared with about 800 in dogs trained to detect cancer, and shows a strong chemotaxis attraction towards human cancer secretions.

Working with an enthusiastic group of Ph.D. students, we built an intelligent model that uses concepts from photography, AI, and ML to analyze video recordings of C. elegans and quantify its locomotive behavior.

With the abundance of technology now available on everyday edge devices like smartphones, there is real potential for cancer screening tools that can be used at home in the near future.