Research projects, Cooperation agreements

Cognitive deficits and fatigue are among the most common symptoms of post-COVID-19 disease. They not only burden patients but also have a significant societal and economic impact. An accurate diagnosis of the symptoms is required to address this issue with targeted therapies. However, distinguishing them from other non-specific causes (e.g., job overload, depression) requires considerable resources.

In this context, the EPSILON project focuses on the efficient, objective, and concise differentiation of cognitive deficits and fatigue as late effects of COVID-19. Current research of the consortium indicates that both symptoms occur frequently but essentially represent separate late effects of COVID-19.

The central task of EPSILON is to construct a multimodal and individualized data profile of post-COVID patients, allowing for a precise differentiation of cognitive and fatigue-associated late effects. This data profile will be created by using interactive VR technologies and wearable sensors. It includes cognitive, vegetative, and behavioral parameters and examines which factors provide the best possible differentiation between the groups. This approach aims to relieve post-COVID outpatient clinics and create a valuable database for future COVID research and applications.

Fraunhofer HHI is involved in the project with the group "Interactive and Cognitive Systems", forming part of the "Vision and Imaging Technologies" department. Paul Chojecki, Senior R&D Manager at Fraunhofer HHI and coordinator of EPSILON consortium, defines a clear perspective for the two-year project duration:

"We are looking forward to continuing the successful collaboration of the VReha consortium and to further refine the previous results for post-COVID diagnostics. In EPSILON, we want to advance our perceptual human-technology interaction technologies and enable real-time analysis of post-COVID health data. Thus, we contribute another building block to effective and efficient digital health applications."

The emphasis of Fraunhofer HHI's work is to further develop VR tools, especially hybrid and multimodal sensing and interaction technologies. These focus on gaze, gesture, body, speech, and real-time middleware software. In detail, data from different sensors will be collected, interpreted, and used via the Fraunhofer HHI middleware to implement natural and user-friendly interaction concepts and to measure behavioral parameters.

The second emphasis of the Fraunhofer HHI team is to initiate the interactive data space. At this intersection, the various data in the project are stored, fused, and processed. In doing so, the web-based evaluation platform. This platform will house the psychological, behavioral, and vegetative data on which the EPSILON partners will collaboratively develop the multimodal characterization model to differentiate the post-COVID subtypes. This model forms the foundation for the real-time analysis procedure that will be implemented in the Interactive Data Space to analyze the patient data. The entire EPSILON data collection and analysis system will also be made available to post-COVID research and post-COVID outpatient clinics to support their work.

In addition to Fraunhofer HHI, other top-class project partners are involved in EPSILON: The University of Leipzig - Day Clinic for Cognitive Neurology, the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin - Campus Virchow-Klinikum - Clinic for Neurology with Experimental Neurology, and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig.

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Wissenschaftlicher Ansprechpartner:
Paul Chojecki
Phone +49 30 31002-281
Email paul.chojecki@hhi.fraunhofer.de

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Weitere Informationen:
https://www.hhi.fraunhofer.de/abteilungen/vit/projekte/epsilon
http://www.epsilon-projekt.de/
https://www.hhi.fraunhofer.de/abteilungen/vit/projekte/vreha.html