Intern
Rudolf-Virchow-Zentrum - Center for Integrative and Translational Bioimaging

Vishnu Manoj

My name is Vishnu Manoj and I did my bachelors in biomedical science in Monash University in Australia. I went on to do my masters in Medical Physics in Lithuania and currently am doing a PhD in the AG Heinze group focused on image analysis on microscopy images.

My main task is involved in implementing Machine Learning workflows in microscopy and image analysis. I am focused on the study of blood vessel network in long bones of mice where there is an existence of a network of blood vessels on the micrometer scale that spans the entire bone. I use specialized image analysis software to study properties of this network that can be helpful for disease diagnosis later in the future specifically to design a classifier that can distinguish between healthy and diseased bones.

I am also working on another project which involves the study of thrombus formation using Machine Learning approaches. Sepsis has a mortality rate of 30-50% and thromboembolisms are one of the features that arises from sepsis. Currently, the molecular mechanisms of thrombus formation are not well-elucidated and it is believed that there are multiple key players involved that can elucidate a host of similar but related trajectories that all lead to thrombus formation. The idea of this project is to develop a machine learning approach that can distinguish and characterize these different trajectories and the parameters involved in influencing these trajectories. This in the future could be useful for fields such as personalized medicine which maximizes the efficiency of drug prescriptions on blocking thrombus formation while minimizing side effects based on the patient’s biodata.