Australian e-Health Research Centre researchers are developing new tools to analyse and extract valuable information from medical images, such as magnetic resonance imaging (anatomical, functional, spectroscopy), computed tomography, positron emission tomography, ultrasound imaging, molecular imaging, and histology imaging.
The main application domains are:
- image-guided therapy
- image-guided surgery
- surgery simulation
- computer aided diagnosis
- therapy monitoring
Publications for the biomedical imaging team.
Colonoscopy Simulator
The aim of this project is to build a patient specific surgical training system to increase the success rate of optical colonoscopy operations. By improving the skill level of of optical colonoscopy the cost to the patient (and Australian health care system) will be reduced by not having to pay for CT Colonography (virtual colonscopy).
The surgical training system will allow the surgeon to navigate through a segmented image of the patient's colon in 3D, and provide haptic and visual feedback through a mechanical model of the colon. By building a database of difficult colonoscopy operations surgeons will be able to improve their skills for future operations. More about the Colonoscopy Simulator...
Alzheimers Disease
The aim of the Alzheimers Disease project is to research algorithms and software to process and analyse MRI and PET scans both qualitatively and quantitatively. It is part of a larger CSIRO and Federal Government project aimed at Lifestyle and Aging.
The research covers algorithms and implemetations for improving image quality as well as quantitative image data and the development of automated expert systems for producing various outputs. More about the Alzheimers Disease project...
Cross Platform Medical Imaging Library (MILX™)
Over the past two years our researchers have amassed a large repository of medical imaging algorithms. To take advantage of each researcher’s algorithms, a common development platform has been created. The purpose of the platform is to allow new researchers to start developing algorithms based on the existing code base in a time efficient manner, while enforcing a Software Engineering environment that ensures maintainable and tested code. The Cross Platform Medical Imaging Library (MILX™) is the platform that provides this integration and it expands on algorithms provided by the Insight Tool Kit (ITK), the Visualisation Tool Kit (VTK) and other open source tools.
Knee Segmentation
The goal of the Knee Segmentation project is the development of an automated 3D segmentation system for MR Images of the knee. The primary aim of this system is to obtain accurate and robust segmentation results for the cartilages of the knee. This system will initially be used to aid in the clinical studies on osteoarthritis (OA). More about the Knee Segmentation project...
Prostate Radiotherapy
This project aims to develop methods to use only high contrast MRI scans directly for prostate cancer radiotherapy treatment planning. A CT scan from the same patient would not be required, as the prostate would be automatically delineated and electron densities assigned from the MRI scan. The main benefit of this work will be to improve treatment outcomes by reducing the dosage to normal tissues, and increasing dosage to the prostate. More about the high precision MRI based radiotherapy project...
