October 2002: Prof. Paul F. Whelan (Vision Systems Group, Dublin City University) in conjunction with Dr. Helen Fenlon (Department of Radiology, Mater Hospital) and Dr. Padraic Mac Mathuna (Gastrointestinal Unit, Mater Hospital) have been awarded a SFI Investigator Programme Grant for their work in medical imaging. This research programme will focus on the Automated Computer Analysis of Computed Tomography (CT) Colonography Image Data Sets for the Detection of Colorectal Cancer using Standard and Low-dose Radiation CT Acquisition. The project will take place over a 4 year period. This award will be used to support postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers and will feed into the VSG's existing medical imaging systems research program.

Project Team

• SFI Principal Investigator: Prof. Paul F. Whelan
• Clinical Co-Investigators: Dr. Helen Fenlon (Department of Radiology, Mater Hospital) & Dr. Padraic Mac Mathuna (Gastrointestinal Unit, Mater Hospital)
• DCU Faculty: Robert Sadleir
• Medical Research Co-ordinator (Mater Hospital): Joanne Coyle (14 months), Loretta O'Brien (current)
• Senior Post-Doc: Dr. Ovidiu Ghita
• Post-Doc: Dr. Kevin Robinson
• PhD Students: Nicolas Sezille, Tarik Chowdhury, Abhilash Miranda
• MEng Student: Vincent Luaute
• STAR 2005: Niamh Sullivan from Mercy College, Coolock
• Visiting Researcher: Prof John Barron (2003/04 - Professor of Computer Science at The University of Western Ontario, Canada)

Project Areas

• Novel Segmentation
• Custom Visualization
• Custom Phantom Design
• Novel Computer Aided Detection and Diagnosis (CAD-CTC)
• Low dose characterization
• Test sets of polyp data based on our custom phantom are available for comparative testing. Due to the large size of these files these are available on a request basis. Email Prof. Paul F. Whelan for details.

Project News

• Oct. 2005: "Fast colon centreline calculation using optimised 3D topological thinning" and "MRI diffusion-based filtering: a note on performance characterisation" appeared in the TOP25 (most frequently downloaded) articles of the Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics journal.
• June 2005: Sadleir & Whelans recent paper ("Fast Colon Centreline Calculation using Optimised 3D Topological Thinning", Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics, 29(4), 2005) was headlined and reviewed in the Virtual Colonoscopy Digital Community bulletin (Auntiminne.com). In an article by Eric Barnes entitled "3D topological thinning improves colon centerline tracking in VC " he states that researchers from Dublin City University in Ireland solved the problem of computational overload in a common task required of software for 3D endoluminal views of the colon" (8/6/2005)

Related Educational Resources

• Undergraduate Course (EE425): Image Processing and Analysis - Restricted access.
• Postgraduate Course (EE544): Computer & Machine Vision - Restricted access.
• NeatVision is a free Java based image analysis and software development environment, which provides high level access to a wide range of image processing algorithms through well defined and easy to use graphical interface. (www.neatvision.com)
• NeatMed: The NeatMed Medical Imaging Application Developers Interface (API) was created to facilitate the development of medical imaging applications. It provides straightforward access to medical image encoded according to either the DICOM or Analyze formats. This is also distributed freely.
• June 2005: SFI Secondary Teacher Assistant Researcher (STAR) Niamh Sullivan from Mercy College, Coolock, joins the Vision Systems Group for the summer.
• The STAR funded educational resource for secondary schools is now available online.