The idea stared in 2018 when Dr. Dave Nguyen, PhD, invented a computational algorithm to measure the complex shapes of colon polyps. His favorite high school science teacher, Mr. Nichols, had just died of colon cancer, so Dr. Nguyen invented a method for classify complex shapes in biology to commemorate him. He named the method Linearized Compressed Polar Coordinate (LCPC) Transform.

We realized this worked on complicated shapes in STEM that no other method could measure.

In 2019, Dr. Nguyen participated in the QBI Hackathon at the University of California-San Francisco. He was able to extract quantitatively different signatures of brain MRIs of patients with ADHD compared to their non-affected counterparts. This began our exploration of how the LCPC Transform can revolutionize STEM research in the area of shape analysis.

The Problems Facing Biotech and Pharma Research

- No way to produce clean data when quantifying complex shapes of cells in 2D culture or 3D organoids in a dish.

- No way to produce clean data when measuring the irregular shapes of cells in histology images and blood smear images.

- Noisy data from measuring area, volume, and signal intensity results in false discoveries or no discoveries.

The Problems Facing STEM Education Programs

- Lack of on-demand and live training programs teaching how to do image analysis for STEM research, even though so much of STEM relies on analyzing images.

- No easy-to-use software allowing high school and college students to contribute to science by making discoveries based on publicly available STEM image archives or smartphone images.

- For students who don't know how to do computer programming -- or who don't like to code -- there is no software allowing them to easily express their scientific creativity in STEM research. BrainScanology's Shape Genie software unlocks their creativity.

How Does BrainScanology Solve These Problems?

• We developed a web-based software (a.k.a. a SaaS software) called Shape Genie. This software is easy-to-use because it does not require knowledge of computer programming. We offer free, long-term accounts so that anyone can learn to use Shape Genie.
• We created a workshop on "Fundamentals of Image Analysis" for STEM research, in which we teach how to use Shape Genie and two other popular software.
• We created a purely on-demand version of our workshop AND a live version in which a mentor teaches students how to apply Shape Genie to a project of their choice.
• We offer consulting services in which we do shape analysis and data analysis for academic labs and biotech companies.

Who Will Benefit?

- Biotech and pharma companies that are unable to measure subtle, but important phenotypes in cells, tissues, and organs.

- University STEM departments that want to equip their students with cutting-edge research tools for the future.

- Researchers who need to make sense of phenotypic data, or who want to integrate phenotypic data with genomic/transcriptomic data.

- Private high schools who want their STEM students to be career ready with cutting-edge skills.

How Will We Make Money?

- We will continue to partner with more private high school education institutions to offer our workshops and software in a profit-sharing model.

- We will sell research consulting services to academic labs and biotech companies.

- Our shape-analysis software, called ShapeGenie, will be offered as a monthly subscription SaaS product. We will have three tiers of subscription pricing to accommodate subscribers ranging from individuals to hospitals to pharma corporations. When used for purely research purposes, it does not require FDA approval before we sell it.  

- We will also offer consulting services alongside access to ShapeGenie. Companies will hire us to extract shape features and build predictive machine learning models for their research question (like "Why doesn't this group of patients respond to our drug?").

- Regarding our diagnostic machine learnings models, such as for Alzheimer's Disease: after FDA approval we will sell our services at a discount to health providers (our customers), such as Kaiser and Anthem Blue Cross / Shield. They sell our services at a marked-up price to their patients (the end-users). 

The Deeper Story of BrainScanology

In 2013, one of Dr. Nguyen's good friends from college took his own life because of bipolar disorder. His name was Thuan Trinh. At Thuan's funeral, Dr. Nguyen promised that he would do something about bipolar disorder one day. At the time, Dr. Nguyen was studying cancer biology, so he didn't know what that promise would even look like. However, in 2018 when the LCPC Transform was created -- six years after wandering away from cancer biology and into computational biology -- and Dr. Nguyen realized exactly what his promise to Thuan would be like: BrainScanology ...