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Cambridge Consultants and Neuro Engineering Technologies Research Institute (NETRI) announce a breakthrough in precision imaging of brain activity. Working with NETRI’s brain-on-a-chip technology and lensless imaging approach that detects the activity of neurons in brain tissue, Cambridge Consultants was able to accelerate the processing of individual images by over three orders of magnitude, moving from about 20 minutes to process an image to just hundreds of milliseconds. This step-change in speed opens up radical new possibilities, including real-time processing of neural activity and mimicking of neural activity on engineered platforms, supporting the development of novel treatments for conditions such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.
Organ-on-a-chip is an emerging and highly promising area of biomedical research. The technology involves the ex-vivo (outside of the body) simulation of organ function on a chip. The ultimate promise of such technologies is to greatly reduce the time and cost of testing new therapies for safety and efficacy. Brain-on-a-chip technologies seek to apply this approach to the neural circuitry of the brain, the most complex organ in the human body.
We design disruptive technology to revolutionize diagnosis and treatment
French startup NETRI creates disruptive technologies for brain-on-a-chip applications in neuroscience. Its focus is on ex-vivo replication of human neural circuits in order to understand how neurological disorders, treatments and chemicals affect the brain. NETRI uses a combination of brain-on-a-chip technology and lensless microscopy to record the activity of millions of connected neurons, mimicking the neural circuits implicated in neurological disorders.
However, by detecting something as complex as neural activity, the approach generates an enormous amount of data, requiring many hours of computation effort in order to fully reconstruct the spatio-temporal map of neuron communication. The imaging system runs at approximately 1,000 frames per second, and the baseline algorithm took an average of 1,090 seconds – 18 minutes – to process a single image on a powerful desktop PC. Without improvement, a single second of recording can take 12 days to process.
Recognizing its world-class expertise in medical imaging and high-performance computation, NETRI approached Cambridge Consultants to address this bottleneck, challenging the company to develop a radical algorithm acceleration. A scientific imaging team was set to work within the company’s Data Lab, an on-site facility with state-of-the-art compute infrastructure, allowing rapid exploration of data and compute-heavy approaches, such as high-definition imaging and deep learning.
Cambridge Consultants selected the NVIDIA DGX POD architecture for their AI infrastructure, deploying the NetApp ONTAP AI solution that combines NVIDIA DGX-1™ with NetApp ONTAP storage and network fabric. Through a series of optimizations, the team was able to show that the NVIDIA DGX-1 system delivers the AI supercomputing power required to process a frame in an average of 0.3 seconds, around 3,000 times quicker than the original approach. This acceleration was achieved through a series of optimizations including the design and application of mathematical and algorithmic improvements, leveraging NumPY GPU-accelerated with RAPIDS (CuPy), and exploiting the sheer power of the DGX-1 system. The combined result enables NETRI to completely reimagine their approach and to set their sights on the most radical possibilities, including developing a fully scalable and real-time medical service for hospitals and pharmaceutical industries to perform both in-vitro diagnostics and personalized treatment for every patient suffering from a neurological condition.
Sally Epstein, Head of Strategic Technology at Cambridge Consultants, commented: “Lensless imaging replaces traditional optics with computation, creating a new set of optimization challenges that our team was excited to address. We’re proud to be at the leading-edge of developments in brain-on-a-chip technology and neural imaging, at the point where radical improvements can be unlocked by those with the right combination of vision, experience and compute power.”
Thibault Honegger, Chief Scientific Officer, President & Co-founder of NETRI, commented: “By combining the expertise of Cambridge Consultants with NVIDIA-based computational power, the real-time processing of neural communications becomes possible. This can mark a paradigm shift in assessing the functional aspects of in-vitro neural networks. With this level of resolution, we will be able to accurately measure the “wellness” of the network, in relation to neurological conditions and potential recovery.”
Notes to editors
About NETRI
NETRI has unique expertise and technologies in microfluidics engineering. NETRI designs, fabricates and exploits 3D microfluidics chips dedicated to neuroscience, aiming at understanding the structural and functional mechanistic of neural circuits, neurological disorders or potential novel treatments. Using a multi-compartments approach, we can reproduce in vitro neural networks of every complexity up to connectome-on-chip. Using rodent or iPSCs cells, physiologically relevant conditions can be replicated using NETRI’s NeurofluidicTM chips: Multi-nodes neural/non neural interfaces, neural circuits of every complexity, controlled structural connectivity, functional network recording, co-cultures in all nodes with fluid isolation, controlled microenvironment with disease-related injury, high-throughput microscopy compliance and small amount of reagents.
NETRI currently collaborates with pharmaceutical companies, CROs, academic researchers and medical doctors to accelerate the understanding of neural troubles mechanisms and the discoveries of new treatments. For further information: www.netri.fr/
NETRI
Thibault Honegger
Chief Scientific Officer, President & co-founder
+33 48762 8118
pr@netri.fr
About Cambridge Consultants and Capgemini
About Cambridge Consultants
As the deep tech powerhouse of Capgemini, Cambridge Consultants (CC), is a global team of 800 bright, talented people. We are united by the ambition to turn brilliant ideas into technologies, products and services that have never been seen before. And which will transform business, society and the planet. Deep tech is a mindset; a bold strategy that harnesses radical science and engineering to achieve things no-one else can. It enables our clients to gain unassailable commercial advantage from defendable technology that they own. We are trusted by some of the world’s biggest brands and most ambitious start-ups to realise their critical technology-based aspirations – and we’ve been doing it for 60 years. Cambridge Consultants is part of Capgemini Invent.
About Capgemini
Capgemini is a global business and technology transformation partner, helping organisations to accelerate their dual transition to a digital and sustainable world, while creating tangible impact for enterprises and society. It is a responsible and diverse group of 340,000 team members in more than 50 countries. With its strong over 55-year heritage, Capgemini is trusted by its clients to unlock the value of technology to address the entire breadth of their business needs. It delivers end-to-end services and solutions leveraging strengths from strategy and design to engineering, all fueled by its market leading capabilities in AI, cloud and data, combined with its deep industry expertise and partner ecosystem. The Group reported 2023 global revenues of €22.5 billion
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