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Thursday 1999
Medical Image Processing, Visualisation and Analysis
St. Edmund Hall, Oxford 12th to 16th July 1999
Thursday 15th
Deformable models
Thursdays proceedings began with an interesting and informative presentation by Professor Chris Taylor (University of Manchester) on the interpretation of a wide range of images using deformable models. The theme is using context specific models to interpret an image or scene, rather than merely perform general image processing. In the introductory phase, the concepts of scene structure and levels of interpretation were introduced and a good insight given into the range of simpler approaches, which in the extensive experience of the presenter, have failed to work because they are insufficiently generalisible or depend on ad-hoc adaptation.
Image-guided surgery
Professor Dave Hawkes (Kings College London) gave a broad and most interesting talk on how surgical practice is being profoundly influenced by computer-assistance and image guiance. A sometimes anecdotal review of image guided surgery, surprisingly dating back as far as the last century, gave a fascinating historical foundation for the current methods. Practical problems in establishing and maintaining absolute and relative position information, and the stereotactical registration approaches to finding solutions, were covered well, even for the uninitiated student. The third talk of the day was given by Dr Alison Noble (Oxford University), and was called Angiographic imaging, modelling and intervention. In describing the clinical need to know the detailed structure of blood vessels, and their sizes, she introduced the important competing modalities, such as: MRA; digital subtraction angiography; and 2D/3D Doppler ultra- sound. The essential nature of angiographic data visualisation was presented, and methods of 2D and 3D visualisation given with supporting justification of techniques to improve their effectiveness. The important area of MRA segmentation was well covered, with techniques from simple thresholding on flow magnitude to expectation maximisation based segmentation being described. In the final presentation Mr Frans Gerritsen (Medical Systems Division, Philips) spoke about the potentially difficult but critical task of establishing and maintaining productive collaboration between industry, academia and the end- user. By the nature of the subject area this talk was quite different from the technical topics covered earlier in the day. After showing examples of the Philips medical systems product line he illustrated the benefits of good 3D surface rendering, using an example imaging of the brain, including blood vessel structure. All-in-all this was an interesting exposure to the broader issues of implementing medical system ideas and producing functional equipment that will do what is needed support the skills of the clinical practitioners.
Eddy Munday
Taken from IPEM SCOPE 8(4) December 1999
Thursday's Lecture Notes Online
Shape Modelling and Deformable Models. Prof. Chris Taylor
Computer Assisted Surgery - Image Guided Surgery. Prof. David Hawkes
Angiographic Imaging, Modelling and Interventions.Dr. Alison Noble
Collaboration Between Industry, Academia and End Users. Dr. ir. Frans Gerritsen