Researchers at USF Are Using AI to Fight Malaria

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– "Anopheles stephensi is a very effective malaria vector that has adapted to the human environment," Ryan Carney of the University of South Florida says in a press release. "It can lead to massive, unheard-of epidemics in cities, something we have already begun to observe in Africa." That's why Carney and computer science and engineering professor Sriram Chellappan are working with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to develop a "smart trap" they say can identify Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes using artificial intelligence. The traps, which are being developed with $3.6 million in funding from the NIH's EMERGENTS initiative, will be placed in areas where Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes are known to breed. The press release notes 95% of the world's malaria deaths will occur in Africa, where Anopheles stephensi is a major issue. "We are the only team in the world that can successfully enable anatomy-based classification from a single photo to identify mosquitoes," Chellappan says. "Our algorithm uses specific anatomical components to identify the mosquito type, such as the wing for Anopheles stephensi, after automatically identifying the head, thorax, abdomen, wings, and legs from a mosquito

In an effort to eliminate malaria in Africa, researchers at the University of South Florida are revolutionising mosquito tracking through the use of artificial intelligence. Together with an interdisciplinary team of researchers, Ryan Carney, associate professor of integrative biology, and Sriram Chellappan, professor in the department of computer science and engineering, will further the study of malaria and investigate novel approaches to real-time targeting of malaria-infected mosquitoes.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of the National Institutes of Health, awarded a $3.6 million funding to support the initiative, which is a component of a multinational endeavour. With in-country experience in Nigeria and Cameroon, the initiative, called EMERGENTS (Enhancing Malaria Epidemiology Research via Genomics and Translational Systems), will create a new International Centre for Excellence for Malaria Research in west-central Africa. The World Health Organisation estimates that 608,000 people died from malaria in 2022, out of 249 million new cases worldwide. 95% of the world’s malaria deaths in 2022 will occur in Africa, where the disease is disproportionately prevalent.

A new generation of African scientists will be trained, insecticide resistance will be better understood, and the geographic spread of Anopheles stephensi, a dangerous urban malaria vector that has recently begun to invade Africa, will be examined as part of the international center’s five-year plan to advance evidence-based strategies for malaria eradication and elimination. Global malaria management will make use of the data collected at the centre. Even though Africa is the EMERGENTS initiative’s main emphasis, the technologies and approaches created as a result of this effort have important ramifications for the US. Florida is still a crucial location for tracking mosquito-borne diseases because of its pleasant environment and high number of foreign visitors.

By teaching local scientists how to use citizen science through mosquitodashboard.org, a worldwide mosquito-tracking dashboard they developed in 2022 with support from the National Science Foundation, Carney and Chellappan will spearhead the project’s image-driven mosquito surveillance operations. Using images that users provide from their smartphones, the web dashboard incorporates hundreds of thousands of mosquito observations from multiple platforms into an interactive, real-time dashboard and data portal. Chellappan is testing a smart trap with artificial intelligence that will attract, catch, and track Anopheles stephensi using some of the same special algorithms. During this research, several prototypes of the patent-pending smart trap will be deployed throughout west-central Africa with the aim of precisely trapping and automatically identifying Anopheles stephensi in real time.

According to Chellappan, “we are the only team in the world that can successfully enable anatomy-based classification from a single photo to identify mosquitoes.” “Our algorithm uses specific anatomical components to identify the mosquito type, such as the wing for Anopheles stephensi, after automatically identifying the head, thorax, abdomen, wings, and legs from a mosquito image.” The smart trap and dashboard are effective instruments that give researchers and mosquito control workers real-time data for the early identification of invasive and disease-carrying mosquitoes. Carney and Chellappan’s earlier investigations provide evidence of the dashboard’s and citizen science’s effectiveness.

This procedure has previously been tested through citizen science initiatives in nations like Ethiopia and Madagascar as part of an ongoing campaign that was started in 2022 in partnership with the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Anopheles stephensi is the primary objective of this new initiative, which will provide Carney and Chellappan with more cash to improve their algorithms and add more species for automatic identification.

Carney stated, “Anopheles stephensi is a very effective malaria vector that has adapted to the human environment.” As a result, it can lead to massive, unheard-of epidemics in cities, something we have already begun to observe in Africa. Although Anopheles stephensi has not yet been found domestically, Florida is the epicentre of mosquito-borne diseases in the United States, and our species identification tools and citizen science infrastructure make sure we are ready to combat this possible danger. In order to further improve community-led mosquito surveillance and management both domestically and internationally, Chellappan believes that as technology develops during this initiative, the traps will be made available to individuals at a reasonable cost.