NephCure Funded Research 2017 2017 NephCure Award Recipients NephCure Kidney International-Neptune Ancillary Studies Grant Anant Madabhushi, Ph.D. Foundtional tool-box (Apps) for the NEPTUNE Digital Pathology-based Analytical hiSto-omicS intErrogation plaTform (NDP-ASSET) Conventional pathologic assessment of nephrotic syndrome (NS) fails to fully capture structural features that reflect mechanisms and predict outcomes. The Nephrotic Syndrome Study Network (NEPTUNE) pathologists have established a Digital Pathology Repository (DPR) of whole slide kidney biopsy images (WSI) and have developed methods to standardize visual assessment, resulting in increased reproducibility and accuracy. Dr. Madabhushi will study if computational annotation of primitives, attained with this pilot study, will enable discovery of visual and sub-visual features that can be used in future studies for discovery of molecular mechanisms and therapeutic targets, and clinically relevant categorization of NS. Consequently, we propose to develop and test foundational Apps (tool-box) of the NEPTUNE Digital Pathology-based Analytic hiSto-omicS intErrogation plaTform (NDP-ASSET) for segmentation of normal and pathologic (primary and secondary) classes of structural primitives. Convolutional neural network-based, deep learning (DL) algorithms will be trained for machine-based annotation of primitives in WSI of normal and diseased kidneys, and subsequently validated in an independent replication set. To demonstrate utility of the deeply annotated structural data, we will develop and apply tools for sub-visual feature extraction to test whether the sub-visual features can predict APOL1 risk genotypes in African American NEPTUNE patients. See Awardees From Other Years: 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2009 2008