Invited Talk Dezember 2007

Prof. Daniel Rueckert

Prof. Daniel Rueckert (Imperial College London) will be giving an invited talk on Friday, Dec. 7, at 11:00, in room MI 03.13.010, Garching on "Quantification of brain development during early childhood using non-rigid registration"

Abstract:

The majority of brain growth occurs during the first two years of life, much occurring in-utero prior to birth at 40 weeks' gestational age, and a full understanding of human brain development must include this early period of rapid development. The characterization of early brain development is particularly important in infants who are born prematurely. Preterm birth affects around 5% of births in industrialised countries and its consequences contribute to significant individual, medical and social problems. The principle morbidity among survivors is neurological, resulting from the profound effect of preterm birth on the developing brain: half of all infants born at less than 25 weeks have neurodevelopmental impairment at 30 months of age, and in less immature infants, neuropsychiatric problems are common in the teenage years. The anatomical correlates of functional disorders are, however, poorly characterized. Using state-of-the-art MR imaging it is nowadays possible to study the brain development and maturation process in infants born prematurely from as young as 25 weeks onwards. Recent advances in MR imaging also enable the acquisition of high-resolution fetal images. This allows us to study the brain development in-utero as well as ex-utero. In this talk we describe the computational challenges in the analysis of these images. In particular we describe how non-rigid registration can be used in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies to quantify brain development and growth between the last trimester of pregnancy and early childhood.

Bio:

Dr. Daniel Rueckert joined the Visual Information Processing Group in the Department of Computing as a lecturer in 1999 and became senior lecturer in 2003. Since 2005 he is Professor of Visual Information Processing. He received a Diploma in Computer Science (equiv to M.Sc.) from the Technical University Berlin and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Imperial College London. Before moving to Imperial College, he has worked as a post-doctoral research fellow in the Division of Radiological Sciences and Medical Engineering, King's College London where he has worked on the development of non-rigid registration algorithms for the compensation of tissue motion and deformation. The developed registration techniques have been successfully used for the non-rigid registration of various anatomical structures, including in the breast, liver, heart and brain and are currently commercialized by IXICO, an Imperial College spin-out company. During his doctoral and post-doctoral research he has published more than 100 journal and conference articles. Professor Rueckert is an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging and a referee for a number of international medical imaging journals and conferences.