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Dr Lene Sveen is a researcher in the fish health group at Nofima, an institute for applied research within the fields of fisheries, aquaculture, and food research. In this article, she tells about her research on salmon skin.
Tell us about your project with Aiforia
"In Aiforia, we have developed a model that recognizes the successive tissues in Atlantic salmon skin. The skin of fish are complex organs, with multiple cell types and tissues that responds to the environment. Healthy skin is important for the robustness of the fish, and skin disease is a primary constraint to the commercial aquaculture industry.
We have analyzed skin from Atlantic salmon with bacterial diseases and parasites and how the skin responds to handling operations such as mechanical de-lousing and transportation.
We stained our skin sections with AB/PAS. Now, we have 200 slides in our project. The AI model worked very well with fewer slides, but whenever we have experiments with different fish sizes, infection, wound healing trials, or batches that stain in different shades of the AB/PAS color, we add some more training in order to make the AI model even more efficient."
What does Aiforia enable you to do that you otherwise could not (or would find difficult) with traditional methods?
"There are many advantages to Aiforia. We can measure and count tissue, which is impossible to do manually. We can have large sample sets, which makes the analysis more accurate, and continuous data is also a big advantage."
What were your expectations of using AI?
"My expectations were not too high. Last year, we decided to give Aiforia a try. However, I am very impressed with the platform and what it can learn!"
What stage are you at with your work with Aiforia?
"The AI model is in continuous work. We are about to publish the results from one trial. However, the AI model will have to evolve with the input samples and staining."
What is the most unique aspect of your work with Aiforia?
"During my work developing the AI model, I have spent many hours drawing annotation regions. This has given me a deeper understanding of the tissue that I work with, and maybe we have even discovered some new functions of the skin, which we plan to look at closer in future projects."
Read the publication of Dr Sveen's study here →
