Dr. Aslı Okur Kuru

Dr. rer. nat. Aslı Okur Kuru currently at Arthrex GmbH Erwin-Hielscher-Str. 9 81249 München, Germany Further Profiles Google Scholar ResearchGate LinkedIn Xing

Dissertation

Challenges in Deployment of Advanced Radioguided Surgery Solutions Abstract: Radioguided surgery is a well-established clinical discipline. However, the devices or systems are not necessarily optimized for the particular needs of the target clinical application. This thesis addresses several challenges associated with the deployment of new technologies or concepts for radioguided surgery in different clinical scenarios on the concrete example of Freehand SPECT, a novel 3D nuclear imaging and navigation system. This includes the analysis of the clinical workflow, definition of the supporting functions of the technology and its modification towards integrated applications. Download: http://mediatum.ub.tum.de?id=1485240

Research Interests

• Radioguided Surgery
  
• Nuclear Imaging
  
• Surgical Workflow
  
• Intraoperative Usability
  
• Medical Augmented Reality
  

Education

• 2011 - 2019
  Technische Universität München - Munich, Germany
  Graduated as Dr. rer. nat. (equivalent to a PhD) in Computer Science, with magna cum laude.
  Research at the Chair for Computer Aided Medical Procedures & Augmented Reality.
  Research funded by CAMP, Nuclear Medicine and Gynecology.

• 2004 - 2010
  Technische Universität München - Munich, Germany
  Studies in Computer Science (minor Mathematics)
  Graduated as Diplom-Informatikerin Univ. (equivalent to a M.Sc. in Computer Science), with distinction.
  Diplomarbeit (DA): Automated Segmentation of Sentinel Lymph Nodes from Freehand SPECT Images of Breast Cancer Patients
  Systementwicklungsprojekt (SEP): Robust Laser Surface Reconstruction
  Interdisziplinäres Projekt (IDP): Erweiterung eines stationären Navier-Stokes-Lösers at the Chair of Scientific Computing (SCCS)

• 1996 - 2004
  Deutsche Schule Istanbul - Istanbul, Turkey

Teaching

• Praktikum Project Management and Software Development for Medical Applications (2015SoSe)
• Praktikum Project Management and Software Development for Medical Applications (2012SoSe)
• Proseminar History of Computational Science, Vision, and Medical Science (2012SoSe)
• Proseminar History of Computational Science, Vision, and Medical Science (2011SoSe)

Student Projects

• Learning-based Surgical Workflow Detection from Intra-Operative Signals by Ergün Kayis (Master Thesis)
• Investigation of the logfiles of freehand SPECT acquisitions for usage characteristics and surgical phase determination by Richard Voigt (IDP/Klinisches Anwendungsprojekt)
• Radiation exposure and protection in radionuclide-guided surgery by Radu Diaconescu (IDP/Klinisches Anwendungsprojekt)
• Patient Data Privacy in ORUse Framework by Kristina Bayer and Peter Maximilian Hirschbeck (IDP/Klinisches Anwendungsprojekt)
• Development of a Matlab analyzation toolkit for 3D lookup tables by Chen Hsuan Shih (IDP)
• Development and Evaluation of a Remote User Interface for Intra-operative Imaging Devices by Max-Emanuel Hoffmann and Tobias Konsek (IDP)
• Analysis of freehand SPECT reconstructions for phantom scans in different configurations using I-125 seeds and a low energy gamma probe by Kanishka Sharma (IDP/Klinisches Anwendungsprojekt)
• Lightweight Framework for Medical Workflow Video Analysis by Johannes Klein (IDP/Klinisches Anwendungsprojekt)
• Modeling and implementing accoustic feedback of a Bluetooth gamma probe by Andrei Mituca (IDP)
• An introduction to OR-Use, a systematic usability data acquisition framework for the operating theatre by Max-Emanuel Hoffmann (Bachelor Thesis)

Publications

2017
	A. Okur, R. Stauder, H. Feußner, N. Navab Quantitative Characterization of Components of Computer Assisted Interventions arXiv:1702.00582 [cs.OH], 2017 (bib)
2015
	B. Frisch, T. Maurer, A. Okur, T. Weineisen, , H. Kübler, N. Navab, HP Wester, M. Schwaiger, M. Eiber Freehand SPECT for 111In-PSMA-I&T radioguided lymphadenectomy in prostate cancer patients Society of Nucler Medicine and Medical Imaging Annual Meeting, Baltimore, USA, 2015 (bib)
	T. Maurer, T. Weineisen, HP Wester, , A. Okur, G. Weirich, H. Kübler, M. Schwaiger, J. Gschwend, B. Frisch, M. Eiber PSMA-radioguided surgery: Introducing molecular surgery in patients with recurrent prostate cancer 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Urological Association, New Orleans, USA, 2015 (bib)
	T. Maurer, G. Weirich, , T. Weineisen, B. Frisch, A. Okur, N. Navab, M. Schwaiger, HP Wester, J. Gschwend, M. Eiber PSMA-radioguided surgery for metastatic lymph nodes in prostate cancer European Urology, in press, available online 6 May 2015 (bib)
	T. Maurer, T. Weineisen, HP Wester, , A. Okur, G. Weirich, H. Kübler, M. Schwaiger, J. Gschwend, B. Frisch, M. Eiber Introduction of PSMA-radioguided surgery in patients with recurrent prostate cancer: taking salvage lymphadenectomy to the next level? Annual Congress of European Association of Urology (EAU), Madrid, March 2015 (bib)
	C. Vetter, T. Lasser, A. Okur, N. Navab 1D-3D Registration for Intra-operative Nuclear Imaging in Radio-guided Surgery IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging 34(2):608-617, 2015 (bib)
2014
	T. Maurer, G. Weirich, T. Weineisen, HP Wester, B. Frisch, A. Okur, H. Kübler, M. Schwaiger, J. Gschwend, M. Eiber Initial experience with PSMA-radioguided surgery in prostate cancer patients 3rd Meeting of the EAU Section of Urological Imaging, Lisbon, Portugal, 2014 (bib)
	B. Frisch, M. Eiber, J. Gardiazabal, P. Matthies, T. Maurer, A. Okur, T. Lasser, N. Navab Challenges for Intra-Operative SPECT IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference, Seattle, USA, November 2014 (bib)
	A. Okur, C. Hennersperger, J.B. Runyan, J. Gardiazabal, M. Keicher, S. Paepke, T. Wendler, N. Navab fhSPECT-US Guided Needle Biopsy of Sentinel Lymph Nodes in the Axilla: Is it Feasible? Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2014, Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 8673, 2014, pp 577-584 (bib)
	J. Gardiazabal, M. Esposito, P. Matthies, A. Okur, J. Vogel, S. Kraft, B. Frisch, T. Lasser, N. Navab Towards personalized interventional SPECT-CT imaging Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Interventions (MICCAI), Boston, USA, September 2014 (bib)
	I. Einspieler, A.R. Novotny, A. Okur, M. Essler, M. E. Martignoni First Experience With Image-guided Resection of Paraganglioma Clinical Nuclear Medicine, Volume 39, Issue:8, August 2014. (bib)
	R. Stauder, A. Okur, N. Navab Detecting and Analyzing the Surgical Workflow to Aid Human and Robotic Scrub Nurses The 7th Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics, London, UK, July 2014 (bib)
	A. Okur, R. Voigt, R. Stauder, N. Navab Investigation of performance log files of freehand SPECT acquisitions for usage characteristics and surgical phase determination The 7th Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics, London, UK, July 2014 (bib)
	P. Matthies, J. Gardiazabal, A. Okur, T. Lasser, N. Navab Accuracy evaluation of interventional nuclear tomographic reconstruction using mini gamma cameras The 7th Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics, London, UK, July 2014 (bib)
	R. Stauder, A. Okur, L. Peter, A. Schneider, M. Kranzfelder, H. Feußner, N. Navab Random Forests for Phase Detection in Surgical Workflow Analysis The 5th International Conference on Information Processing in Computer-Assisted Interventions (IPCAI), Fukuoka, Japan, June 2014 (bib)
	P. Matthies, J. Gardiazabal, A. Okur, J. Vogel, T. Lasser, N. Navab Mini Gamma Cameras for Intra-operative Nuclear Tomographic Reconstruction Medical Image Analysis 18(8):1329-1336, 2014 (bib)
	A. Okur, C. Gerngross, A. Schnelzer, A. Ehlerding, M. Keicher, S. Wiesner, S. Paepke, K. Scheidhauer, T. Wendler First experience with fused ultrasound / freehand SPECT system for hybrid lymphatic mapping in breast cancer patients 52. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft fuer Nuklearmedizin, Hannover, Germany, Mar. 26 - 29, 2014. (bib)
	A.L. Mihaljevic, A. Rieger, B. Belloni, R. Hein, A. Okur, K. Scheidhauer, T. Schuster, H. Friess, M. E. Martignoni Transferring innovative freehand SPECT to the operating room: First experiences with sentinel lymph node biopsy in malignant melanoma European Journal of Surgical Oncology (EJSO), Volume 40, Issue 1, January 2014. (bib)
2013
	P. Matthies, K. Sharma, A. Okur, J. Gardiazabal, J. Vogel, T. Lasser, N. Navab First use of mini gamma cameras for intra-operative robotic SPECT reconstruction Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Interventions (MICCAI), Nagoya, Japan, September 2013 (bib)
	P. Matthies, A. Okur, T. Wendler, N. Navab, M. Friebe Combination of intra-operative freehand SPECT imaging with MR images for guidance and navigation IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology (EMBC), Osaka, Japan, July 2013. (bib)
	J. Gardiazabal, T. Reichl, A. Okur, T. Lasser, N. Navab First flexible robotic intra-operative nuclear imaging for image-guided surgery Information Processing in Computer Assisted Interventions (IPCAI), Heidelberg, Germany, June 26, 2013 (bib)
	C. Bluemel, A. Schnelzer, A. Okur, A. Ehlerding, S. Paepke, K. Scheidhauer, M. Kiechle Freehand SPECT for image-guided sentinel lymph node biopsy in breast cancer European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. The original publication is available online at www.springerlink.com (bib)
	A. Okur, D. I. Shakir, P. Matthies, A. Hartl, M. Essler, S. I. Ziegler, T. Lasser, N. Navab Freehand Tomographic Nuclear Imaging Using Tracked High-Energy Gamma Probes Bildverarbeitung für die Medizin 2013 (BVM), Heidelberg, Germany, March 2013. The original publication is available online at www.springerlink.com (bib)
2012
	A. Schnelzer, A. Ehlerding, C. Bluemel, A. Okur, K. Scheidhauer, S. Paepke, M. Kiechle Showcase of Intraoperative 3D Imaging of the Sentinel Lymph Node in a Breast Cancer Patient using the New Freehand SPECT Technology Breast Care 2012;7:484-486 (bib)
	D. I. Shakir, A. Okur, A. Hartl, P. Matthies, M. Essler, S. I. Ziegler, T. Lasser, N. Navab Towards Intra-operative PET for Head and Neck Cancer: Lymph Node Localization Using High-energy Probes Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Interventions (MICCAI), Nice, France, October 2012 (bib)
	A. Bigdelou, R. Stauder, T. Benz, A. Okur, T. Blum, R. Ghotbi, N. Navab HCI Design in the OR: A Gesturing Case-study MICCAI 2012 Workshop on Modeling and Monitoring of Computer Assisted Interventions (M2CAI), Nice, France, October 2012 (bib)
	I. Einspieler, A. Okur, A.R. Novotny, M. E. Martignoni, K. Scheidhauer Case Report - Image-guided Resection of Paraganglioma 32nd Congress of the European Society of Surgical Oncology, Valencia, Spain, September 2012 (bib)
	A. Rieger, J. Saeckl, R. Hein, A. Okur, T. Wendler, K. Scheidhauer, T. Schuster, H. Friess, M. E. Martignoni Transferring Innovative Freehand SPECT to the Operating Room - First Experiences with Sentinel Lymphonodectomy in Malignant Melanoma 32nd Congress of the European Society of Surgical Oncology, Valencia, Spain, September 2012 (bib)
	N. Navab, T. Blum, L. Wang, A. Okur, T. Wendler First Deployments of Augmented Reality in Operating Rooms IEEE Computer, Volume 45, Issue 7, pp. 48-55 (bib)
	A. Bigdelou, A. Okur, M.-E. Hoffmann, B. Azizi, N. Navab Towards systematic usability evaluations for the OR: an introduction to OR-Use framework Information Processing in Computer Assisted Interventions (IPCAI), Pisa, Italy, June 27, 2012 (bib)
	C. Bluemel, A. Schnelzer, A. Rieger, A. Ehlerding, A. Okur, C. Gerngross, M. E. Martignoni, K. Scheidhauer, M. Schwaiger 3D navigated (radio-guided) sentinel lymph node biopsy using freehand SPECT : final evaluation of Munich's pilot experience in the operating room 50. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Nuklearmedizin, Messe Bremen, Germany, April 2012 (bib)
2011
	A. Okur, A. Ahmadi, A. Bigdelou, T. Wendler, N. Navab MR in OR: First analysis of AR/VR visualization in 100 intra-operative Freehand SPECT acquisitions The 10th IEEE and ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), Basel, Switzerland, Oct. 26 - 29, 2011. (bib)
	C. Bluemel, A. Schnelzer, A. Ehlerding, A. Okur, K. Scheidhauer, M. Kiechle, M. Schwaiger Evaluation of freehand SPECT in sentinel lymph node biopsy of breast cancer Proceedings of the Annual Congress of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM), Birmingham, UK, October 2011 (bib)
	A. Rieger, J. Saeckl, B. Belloni, R. Hein, A. Okur, K. Scheidhauer, T. Wendler, J. Traub, H. Friess, M. E. Martignoni First Experiences with Navigated Radio-Guided Surgery Using Freehand SPECT Case Reports in Oncology, August 2011 (bib)
	A. Okur, C. Bluemel, A. Ehlerding, K. Scheidhauer, A. Schnelzer Meme kanseri cerrahisinde freehandSPECT ile ilk tecrube: Aksiller sentinel lenf nodu biyopsisinde uc boyutlu navigasyon ve kalite guvencesi XI. Ulusal Meme Hastaliklari Kongresi, Antalya, Turkey, Oct. 5 - 9, 2011. (bib)
	C. Lapa, J. Saeckl, A. Rieger, C. Bluemel, A. Okur, T. Wendler, M. E. Martignoni, K. Scheidhauer Investigating added value of freehand SPECT in sentinel node biopsy of melanomas Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM), San Antonio, Texas, USA, June 2011 (bib)
	C. Bluemel, A. Ehlerding, C. Lapa, A. Okur, T. Wendler, A. Schnelzer, K. Scheidhauer Improvements in sentinel node biopsy of breast cancer using freehand SPECT Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM), San Antonio, Texas, USA, June 2011 (bib)
2010
	M. C. Kreissl, A. Okur, T. Chen, A. Bartel, T. Wendler, K. Scheidhauer Pilot study of freehand SPECT for lymphatic mapping in melanoma in upper body Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM), Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, June 2010 (bib)

Research

Intra-operative Human Computer Interaction and Usability Evaluations Computerized medical systems play a vital role in the operating room, yet surgeons often face challenges when interacting with these systems during surgery. In this project we are aiming at analyzing and understanding the Operating Room specific aspects which affect the end user experience. Beside operating room specific usability evaluation approaches in this project we also try to improve the preliminary intra-operative user interaction methodologies.

Advanced Robotics for Multi-Modal Interventional Imaging (RoBildOR) This project aims at developing advanced methods for robotic image acquisitions, enabling more flexible, patient- and process-specific functional and anatomical imaging with the operating theater. Using robotic manipulations, co-registered and dynamic imaging can be provided to the surgeon, allowing for optimal implementation of preoperative planning. In particular, this projects is the first one developing concepts for intraoperative SPECT-CT, and introduces intraoperative robotic Ultrasound imaging based on CT trajectory planning, enabling registration with angiographic data. With distinguished partners from Bavarian industry, this project has a fundamental contribution in developing safe, reliable, flexible, and multi-modal imaging technologies for the operating room of the future.

Freehand SPECT for Sentinel Lymph Node Localization Nuclear medicine imaging modalities assist commonly in surgical guidance given their functional nature. However, when used in the operating room they present limitations. Pre-operative tomographic 3D imaging can only serve as a vague guidance intra-operatively, due to movement, deformation and changes in anatomy since the time of imaging, while standard intra-operative nuclear measurements are limited to 1D or (in some cases) 2D images with no depth information. To resolve this problem we propose the synchronized acquisition of position, orientation and readings of gamma probes intra-operatively to reconstruct a 3D activity volume. In contrast to conventional emission tomography, here, in a first proof-of-concept, the reconstruction succeeds without requiring symmetry in the positions and angles of acquisition, which allows greater flexibility and thus opens doors towards 3D intra-operative nuclear imaging.

In-PSMA Radioguided Surgery With the advent of 68Ga-HBED-PSMA PET hybrid imaging techniques, even small and atypical localized metastatic lesions of prostate cancer can be visualized. However, these lesions might not be easy to localize intraoperatively. The aim of project is to evaluate intraoperative detection of metastatic lesions using a gamma probe and freehand SPECT after injection of radioactive-labelled PSMA-ligands in correlation with postoperative histological findings.