IM-AIM (IMage and Artificial Intelligence in Medicine) is software for cancer diagnosis. Originally, it is developed for Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma (NPC) diagnosis and treatment. This cancer is one of head and neck cancers. It is frequently found in Southeast Asia, particularly South China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. In Thailand, Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma is the 5th most common cancer in male (2010). The primary tumor normally originates in the nasopharynx which is inaccessible. Therefore, NPC is difficult to detect in the early stage.

Medical images take an important role in NPC diagnosis and treatment from which useful tumor information, such as tumor size, location, and extent of invasion can be obtained. Moreover, 3D model of the tumor can be constructed from the images. In Thailand, CT scan is widely used because it is commonly available and cheaper than MR imaging. However, differentiating between the tumor and normal soft tissues in a CT image can be difficult. Identifying the tumor region in each CT slice is a task which demands experience and expertise of radiologists and otolaryngologists

IM-AIM allows physicians to retrieve medical records of patients, delineate tumor regions from medical images by three options, i.e., manual, semi-automatic, and automatic segmentation. 3D model of the tumor can be constructed and displayed on the virtual skull. Physicians thus can precisely determine the tumor location and plan their treatments. In addition, IM-AIM can predict risk of NPC recurrence for individual patient with the accuracy above 70%. Follow-up time can be appropriately scheduled for each patient. Videoconferencing is another feature of IM-AIM that supports tele-consulting between a physician and an expert.

IM-AIM has been extended to support bone tumor diagnosis from MR images. Recently, it has been tested and verified by radiologists and otolaryngologists at Ramathibodi hospital, Thailand.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) typically manifest three main social impairments. They are social interaction, social communication, and imagination. Because of these impairments, it is difficult for the children to live and interact with normal people. They are unable to communicate their needs and usually have repetitive and stereotyped behaviors. Behavior intervention is required. Currently, the number of therapists is limited. This is contradictory to the increasing number of the children with ASD. Thai Therapeutic Robot for children with autism spectrum disorder (TTR) project is thus proposed. This project has been supported by National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), Thailand. Three robots, Chang-Tam, Chang-Phood, and Chang-Kui, are developed to aid therapists in various developmental stimulations.

The robot, named Chang-Tam, is designed for assisting imitation training program. Human imitation is the basis of human social interaction skill. In order to gain this skill, autistic children are thus engaged to imitate human gestures. Chang-Tam is a humanoid robot that can encourage an autistic child to imitate basic human gestures, such as raising the left or right hand etc. In addition, it can imitate the child who sits in front of the robot.

For the other two robots, Chang-Phood and Chang-Kui, they are developed for assisting speech training purposes. These robots can recognize Thai words which are difficult to pronounce. A therapist can select predefined words for training from GUI. The training level can be set differently for each child. The robots can be used not only with autistic children but also other children who have speech disorders. Chang-Phood and Chang-Kui can response to correct and incorrect pronunciation in order to motivate the children to practice as much as possible.

Chang-Kui is an improved version. It has a tablet for displaying human mouth movements. In addition, speech recognition performance has been increased.

Stroke is a severe and life-threatening disease. Strokes occur due to problems with the blood supply to the brain thus most survivors often lose organ functions such as difficult in moving the limbs, hemiplegia or paralysis etc. Since brain is the command and control center of the entire body. In order to recover organs’ functions, the continuous treatment and rehabilitation of patient is needed. The type of equipment used in stroke rehabilitation is functionally simple but prohibitively expensive. Most of them cannot record and show the progress of rehabilitation. Moreover, during physical therapy sessions, patients need the imagination that they are moving that organ. For example, during wrist rehabilitation, a patient is trained to twist the wrist by placing it on the equipment that will force him/her to make a movement. While doing so, he/she needs to imagine that such action is being taken place. Since neurons that are responsible for the wrist movement were destroyed, it is necessary to reshape and rewire the nervous system (Neural plasticity) to restore lost function. Patients must make an effort to practice, which obviously can cause boredom, fatigue and lack of motivation to practice. The concept of bringing together virtual reality and haptic devices to facilitate the rehabilitation process has emerged recently to mitigate the aforementioned drawbacks of traditional methods. With the combination of these two technologies, one can create and simulate realistic virtual environments that can provide believable immersion to the patients.