Himar Fabelo, a PhD student from Dr. Baowei Fei’s Lab, received the Robert F. Wagner All Conference Best Student Paper Award – Runner-Up at the International Conferences of SPIE Medical Imaging in San Diego, California on February 18, 2019. The title of his paper is “Surgical aid visualization system for glioblastoma tumor identification based on deep learning and in vivo hyperspectral images of human patients.”  The Robert F. Wagner All Conference Best Student Paper Award (established 2014) is an acknowledgement of his many important contributions to the Medical Imaging meeting and his many important advances in the field of medical imaging and is co-sponsored The Medical Imaging Perception Society and SPIE.  A first-place winner and runner-up were recognized with a cash prize ($1,000 and $500 respectively) and a certificate during the Plenary Session at the conference.

The Biomedical Imaging Technology Study Sections both review applications involving basic, applied, and pre-clinical aspects of the design and development of medical imaging system technologies, their components, software, and mathematical methods for studies at the cellular, organ, small or large animal, and human scale.

Dr. Baowei Fei, a professor of bioengineering, was previously an associate professor at Emory University School of Medicine and the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Dr. Fei is a world-class researcher in the area of image-guided intervention,” said Dr. Robert Rennaker, Texas Instruments Distinguished Chair in Bioengineering and head of the Department of Bioengineering. “Our ability to recruit faculty members of his caliber is what will propel UT Dallas to national prominence as we strengthen our partnership with UT Southwestern Medical Center. Dr. Fei has received numerous honors and awards, including the Distinguished Investigator Award from the Academy for Radiology & Biomedical Imaging Research and the Young Investigator Award from the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. In 2009 he was recognized as a Distinguished Cancer Scholar by the Georgia Cancer Coalition. He also served as the Conference Chair for the SPIE Medical Imaging: Image-guided Interventions, Robotic Interventions, and Modeling Conference 2017-2020.
https://engineering.utdallas.edu//news/archive/2018-summer/world-class-imaging-scientist-cancer-scholar-joins-university/

 

Mitral regurgitation (MR) is one of the most common valve lesions, which affects 9 million Americans, and is known to increase morbidity and mortality. MR occurs due to leakage of blood through the mitral valve and induces volume overload on the left ventricle, elevates diastolic wall stress and causes rapid left ventricular dilatation, ultimately leading to congestive heart failure within 5 years and death. Timely and effective repair of MR is of utmost importance to halt the progression of heart failure, but current options are limited. Open- heart surgery is the current standard of care and has a relatively high risk of post-operative mortality. Transcatheter mitral valve repair, is a new class of technologies in which MR repair is performed on a beating heart using a catheter that is guided to the mitral valve to deploy reparative devices. However, the route to the mitral valve is a challenging path for existing catheters to follow. The complexity associated with their implantation in a beating heart, often leads to failed procedures and conversion to open heart surgery. We propose to develop a novel intravascular steerable robot that is guided to the mitral valve by multimodality imaging and deploys a novel, low profile device that can effectively repair MR of all forms. This highly innovative and interdisciplinary project combines expertise in surgical robotics, imaging and mitral repair devices. We envision that the intravascular steerable robot and implant, guided by multimodality imaging will significantly simplify Transcatheter mitral valve repair, increasing the procedural accuracy and control, and reducing failure rates.

Martin Halicek, a PhD student from Dr. Baowei Fei’s Lab, received the Robert F. Wagner All Conference Best Student Paper Award – Runner-Up at the International Conferences of SPIE Medical Imaging in Houston, Texas in February 12, 2018. The title of his paper is “Tumor margin classification of head and neck cancer using hyperspectral imaging and convolutional neural networks.” The Robert F. Wagner All Conference Best Student Paper Award (established 2014) is an acknowledgement of his many important contributions to the Medical Imaging meeting and his many important advances in the field of medical imaging and is co-sponsored The Medical Imaging Perception Society and SPIE. A first-place winner and runner-up were recognized with a cash prize ($1,000 and $500 respectively) and a certificate during the Plenary Session at the conference.