Research Areas
3-D Imaging at the Heart of Precision Health
Medical imaging should enable us to first detect heart diseases accurately and then allow us to plan cardiac surgical treatments. We believe that physicians should be able to not only see a patient’s disease well enough to improve diagnosis but also to plan surgery or intervention ahead of time using simulation. Patients should also be able to see better their condition so they can better understand their disease and the planned surgery. Visualisation of the heart is in 3D. Traditionally physicians look at heart images on a normal 2D screen or film. Our new technology will allow them to see the heart beating in 3D helping them to make diagnosis of complicated conditions simpler. Using these visualization tools, physicians will be able to plan operations and other procedures more effectively ahead of time reducing time and complications and hence improving patient’s outcome.
Ultrasonic Visualization, Imaging and Characterization
Ultrasound imaging is focused to image and characterize bone tissues relevant to osteoporosis, scoliosis, and dental care. This includes basic research, development of innovative imaging techniques, and clinical validation. The research involves multi-disciplinary methods to solve medical-related problems, spanning from ultrasound physics, biomedical engineering, signal processing, image processing and analysis, prototype development to electronics.
The research also utilizes artificial intelligence to create new techniques of ultrasound imaging processing to make impact on evaluation of dental diseases.
Smart sensory system can help to achieve accuracy of medical imaging and diagnosis. The research integrates innovative sensors and advanced wearable devices to aide clinicians for disease diagnosis and monitoring, and expand application horizon for diagnostic imaging.
Ultrasound+Artificial Intelligence
Medical imaging takes pictures inside the body. Most medical imaging requires bulky and expensive hardware: refrigerator-sized X-ray machines or multi-million-dollar CT and MRI scanners. Ultrasound is different: it is harmless with no ionizing radiation, and images can be obtained using portable handheld probes which now cost just a few thousand dollars and are nearly the size of smartphones (e.g., Lumify, Clarius, Butterfly).
With proper guidance, AI can learn from the experience of experts on thousands of previous cases to identify anatomic structures and pathology in ultrasound images. AI can be used to inform users when they have obtained diagnostic-quality images, and to suggest diagnoses.
Ultrasound in hip dysplasia
Hip dysplasia affects 1-3% of all infants born, and leads to dislocated hips in severe cases and premature osteoarthritis in milder cases if missed. Current screening for hip dysplasia uses conventional 2D ultrasound, which is unreliable because the limited view of the hip it shows depends highly on the skill of the sonographer.
Since 2012 the research team has been performing 3D ultrasound scans of hundreds of infants suspected of having dysplastic hips. 3D ultrasound provides a much more complete view of the hip, which ought to lead to more reliable diagnosis of hip dysplasia. We are developing visual and quantitative ways to make this diagnosis from 3D data, as shown in this video.
