Andromeda: “Automated Organ Segmentation and 3D Reconstruction for Medical Imaging”

The aim of this PhD project is to join image processing and computer vision techniques with medical and biological information, in order to develop an innovative tool for automatic segmentation and 3D reconstruction and visualisation of organs from medical images. The project will have an impact on promoting population health, since automatic segmentation of organs is a crucial and challenging task for improving computed aided diagnosis and laparoscopic surgery assistance, and it can also support radiologist in the daily routine.

The visual inspection slice-by-slice of ultrasound (US), computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) images, requires high skills and concentration and is very time-consuming and expensive. Thus, automatic medical image segmentation is needed to identify the target anatomy and delineate the boundary of the region of interest. This step would enable doctors and researchers to display and manipulate the information in a fast and easy way facilitating further analysis. The expertise gained by the DoS over the last few years, working as researcher on the development of an innovative image guidance system in the Centre for Medical Image Computing (UCL), can be transferred on the realisation of this project. Working within an interdisciplinary research team, the PhD project involves the design and development of automatic segmentation methods for organs and their 3D reconstruction and visualisation. The PhD student will have access to a large database of medical image through our access to UK Biobank, where the student will be able to test, in conjunction with parallel imaging, the different approaches that will be developed during the PhD programme. The PhD candidate will gain experience in medical image analysis and computer vision techniques and will learn how to apply mathematical and computational methods for solving problems in medical imaging field. Additionally the student will take part in the Faculty Doctoral Research Programme and the Graduate School Programme, and will be trained to gain important transferable skills for a future research career progression.