Lawrence Technological University is proud to highlight the achievements of master’s student Daulet Kaldybek, who joined us from Astana IT University (AITU) in Kazakhstan through LTU’s 3+1 program.
Kaldybek’s experience shows how LTU’s Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) program prepares students to move from coursework to solving complex real-world challenges under the guidance of his advisor, Nabih Jaber, PhD, and co-advisor Mostafa Rahbar, PhD.
Breakthroughs in Real-Time AI for Surgery
Kaldybek recently co-authored a publication in the International Clinical and Medical Case Reports Journal titled: “Real-Time Intraoperative Tissue Characterization and Classification for Robotic Bariatric Surgery.”
The team developed a Dual Attention U-Net (DuAtUNet) model designed to help surgeons distinguish fat, muscle, and vessels during robotic surgery. By integrating targeted attention mechanisms, the model achieved three to seven percent higher accuracy compared to standard industry models. This improvement ensures safer procedures and enhances decision support for surgeons.
Click here to read the full DuAtUNet Publication:
Adapting Big Tech for the Operating Room
Kaldybek also co-authored another publication with Springer titled: “Vision Transformer-Based Fine-Tuned SAM for Enhanced Bariatric Surgery Image Segmentation.”
In this work, Kaldybek adapted Meta’s well-known Segment Anything Model (SAM) for medical imaging. Through fine-tuning on laparoscopic datasets, the system achieved a Dice coefficient of 86.5 percent, outperforming several classical segmentation models. The results show how LTU students are not only applying AI tools but refining them to meet medical demands.
Read the full Springer Chapter here.
Continued Research Momentum
The ECE department is also collaborating with Kaldybek on an additional book chapter, which is currently under review. All of these accomplishments were achieved within only two semesters at LTU. His rapid progress highlights the strength of this partnership and the level of research productivity our students reach in a short time.
The partnership between LTU and AITU continue to demonstrate the value of global collaboration and the impact of international research engagement.
L to R: Daulet Kaldybek, Advisor and ECE Department Chair Nabih Jaber, PhD, and Co-advisor and Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Mostafa D. Rahbar, PhD.
