Product Innovation Lab – Project Brief

Project Title: Pollen counter for Allergy Mitigation with ML and AI component for pollen
type identification.

Sponsor/Advoc Dr. John Muth

ate Name:

Sponsor/Advoc muth@ncsu.edu
ate email:

Unmet There is a definite connection between pollen and allergies. There are
Need/Problem indications over the past 20 years that pollen counts are going up, aggravating
to be the allergy problem. Presently there are pollen counter networks that supply
addressed:
information to about pollen counts, for example Europe has about 400 pollen
counting stations, while the US has about 6 official stations and a variety of
less official networks. Present pollen counting systems are often manual with
people counting pollen grains under a microscope (which has the advantage
that the types of pollen can be identified) other counters just measure
particulate counts. Allergy medicines are big business, also there is concern
that the wrong type of medication can be prescribed, or over prescribed, or
that allergies can interfere with covid, or flu diagnosis.
This project’s hypothesis is that a low cost, stand-alone outdoor pollen
counting system could be developed as a sensor and provide a much more
localized description of the types of pollen in a specific area. With an A.I.
component that would identify the types of pollen grains. This would let
people better understand what medications to take and when to minimize
exposure. This may also be useful for people with asthma.
There may be other benefits such as being able to understand when plants
of a specific crop need to be pollinated by insects or being able to separate
out pollen counts from other measures of poor air quality. As a research tool
it may be of interest to people studying the human bodies response to pollen
particulates as well as help with data for air quality policy making.

Is this a Different areas of the country have different types of flowering plants.
problem in a Demographically different age groups also have different respiratory needs
specific and sensitivities to allergies.
community?

Please identify • Dr. John Muth

and provide • Students will perform stakeholder analysis.
information on
each of the

1
 stakeholders
involved in the
identified
problem.

Are there Yes, Dr. Muth will supply microscope objectives, camera, microscope etc.
financial
resources to For AI, Nivida now has a Jetson Nano board for doing AI, ML. Could also use
support work recent Raspberry Pi camera, and consider doing image analysis off line.
on this
problem? One aspect of project is probably understanding data collection of pollen
grain images.

Please list Air Quality Community

potential Medical community
partners who Biodiversity, agriculture
might have
Consumers who may want to better understand what plants dominate their
interest in
collaborating to neighborhood
address this
problem.

What other N/A

resources have
been identified?

Is the Yes
sponsor/advoca
te willing to
provide
mentoring to
students
working on the
problem?

Please list the • TBD

major outcomes
of the project
and who will
benefit.

Please list any https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2013284118

relevant https://doi.org/10.1007/s10453-022-09750-x
references.