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RESEARCH
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The goal of the UNC CASILab is to bring together clinicans, basic scientists, theoreticians, and engineers to develop new methods of medical image analysis and computer-assisted surgery. The group is led by Dr. Elizabeth Bullitt. Collaborating Departments within UNC include Biostatistics, Computer Science, Genetics, Radiation Oncology, Radiology, Surgery, Sports Medicine, and Statistics. CASILab is also actively collaborating with investigators at or has licensed software to Dana Farber Cancer Institute, the University of Utah, Duke University, the NIH, the University of Florida, Massachusetts General Hospital, Michigan State University, the University of Maryland, the Technical University of Delft (Netherlands), Verona University (Italy), University of Padua (Italy), the Israel Institute of Technology (Israel), University College London (England), and Cardiff University (England).
Support for the laboratory's research has come from NIH-NCI, NIH-HLB, and NIH-NIBIB.
Two patents have issued and one is pending. We have past and/or ongoing relationships with Medtronic Corp. (Minn, Minn), R2 Technology (Grand Rapids, MI), W.L. Gore Inc (Flagstaff, AZ) and Kitware (Rochester, NY).
A major research focus has been upon the automated definition of connected vessel trees from 3D image data. A second focus has been automated brain tumor segmentation. A third focus has been image-guided surgery, both open and endovascular. A particularly exciting area, arising from a combination of the tumor and vessel work, is the statistical analysis of vessel "attributes" for assessment of disease. We believe that this approach may provide a valuable means of determining tumor malignancy and of response to treatment non-invasively. Work on cancer-associated vasculature has recently been extended to genetically engineered mouse models. Important related projects include development of better methods of image registration and of atlas formation. We have also collected high resolution, multi-modal, 3T MR images of 100 healthy human subjects, equally divided by sex and with 20 subjects per decade, that are now publicly available to the scientific community. This database not only gives information about healthy subjects as compared to diseased patients but also provides useful information about healthy aging. Most recently, we have become interested in the effects of exercise upon aging. Other projects are also in progress.
CASILab Research Projects
Vessel segmentation/graph description
Healthy image database for assessment of disease/aging
Quantitative analysis of tumor vasculature
Registration and atlas formation
3D image-guided endovascular surgery
CASILAB HIGHLIGHT 2009
NIBIB e-Advance 2009:
Smooth or Wiggly Blood Vessel Shape Reveals Disease