Intelligent Imaging: Motion, Form and Function Across Scale
Professor Dave Hawkes of the Centre for Medical Image Computing and co-investigators at King's College London, Imperial, the Institute of Cancer Research have been awarded £5.8M for a Programme Grant from EPSRC with the title Intelligent Imaging: Motion Form and Function across Scale. This will allow the team to explore a new paradigm in medical imaging in which computational models of anatomy, motion and microstructure are used to guide image acquisition to compute relevant visualisations and quantitative clinical parameters directly from acquisition data.
This programme will be devising new ways to extract information which can be used to inform diagnosis and guide therapy directly from the measurements of the imaging device. The derivation of clinically-relevant information will drive the entire imaging process, unlike the current paradigm in which an image is acquired to a fixed protocol and then as a separate process that image is interpreted or processed to extract the relevant information. This will enable much closer coupling of acquisition and interpretation, speeding up the imaging process, allowing much more accurate information to be gathered from moving structures in the chest and abdomen, and potentially reducing radiation dose and cost. MR and CT image acquisition will be our main technology platform although the principles can be applied across the technology spectrum. We will be applying this methodology to better detect cancer and charaterise response to therapy of some of the most common and lethal cancers (lung, liver, breast, prostate, colon), cardiovascular disease and the health of the foetus and new born infant.
This new Programme brings together researchers in medical imaging from KCL, Imperial and the Institute of Cancer Research to form an exceptionally strong London wide consortium. The Programme has close links with clinical researchers in London as well as excellent links with industry including large multinationals such as Philips and GSK and a number of SMEs in order to hasten translation of these opportunities to healthcare for the benefit of patients. This Programme will place London at the forefront of international activity in this competitive field. The project is funded as an EPSRC Programme Grant.