NeuroHeist

Inspiration

1.3 million people have brain tumors, with over 100 thousand project to be diagnosed with it in 2026. 24 thousand estimated cases in US for brain and nervous system cancers. We wanted to build a project that made tumors less ambiguous and mysterious by giving patients a firsthand look at how their tumor is affecting their brain with tangible visualizations that are crystal-clear.

What it does

Takes a user's MRI brain scan in standard NIfTI format, visualizing it in 3D for patients/doctors to interact with to see how the predicted tumor region is affecting the brain. From there, userscan simulate various treatments on a tumor's size highlighted in the 3D scan.

How we built it

Jayden worked on the frontend of the project, handling the 3D visualization with Three.js and building with React for ultra-fast website speed, while Steawin handled the AI component. He initially attempted to make/train his own UNet model with PyTorch, but this proved incredibly time-intensive, so we opted for a pre-trained model via HuggingFace made to segment tumors. Ahaan and Derek finished the web work and presentation of the project. In addition, they handled post-development work such as hooking it up to a domain and ensuring everything in the pipeline runes smoothly.

Challenges we ran into

GoDaddy domain connection was misbehaving, while working normally locally

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully linked a three-pronged research retrieval pipeline to influence our brain visualization in real time! Seeing the tumor sizes go down in a matter of seconds was a treat after spending hours at it.

What we learned

We learned about time management and how to delegate tasks based on a person's skillset, but also how to pair/partner people up based on their strengths.

What's next for NeuroHeist

Reliability of the retrieved information. Tavily is increasingly being used for web scraping, but ensuring it retrieves only trusted, verified, and non-biased information is another layer of NeuroHeist we're intending to add.