Beyond Skin Deep: Creating Intuitive Clinical Tools To Better Understand The Diseases and Body (online seminar)

Abstract

Medical imaging technologies, such as MRI and ultrasound, allow us to inspect changes non-invasively in the human anatomy and physiology due to diseases and natural aging. Today, they have become an integral component of clinical diagnosis and surgical treatment. However, different from everyday photographs, medical scans are typically presented in the form of volumetric data with unique image contrasts, each of which intends to emphasize a specific anatomy or pathology. This creates a great challenge to efficiently and accurately navigate and interpret medical scans, and thus places a high dependency on the physician’s skill and experience for the quality of care. In this talk, I will present novel methodologies using automatic analytical techniques and augmented-reality to allow intuitive visualization and interaction of medical imaging data, and demonstrate their applications in the diagnosis and treatment of neurological and musculoskeletal disorders.

Bio

Dr. Yiming Xiao is a CIHR and BrainsCAN postdoctoral researcher at the Robarts Research Institute, Western University. He earned his Bachelor of Engineering degree from the Electrical Engineering Honours program at McGill University in 2009. Then, He completed his M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in Biomedical Engineering to explore novel techniques for image-guided neurosurgery at the Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University. Between 2016-2017, Yiming joined the PERFORM Centre, Concordia University upon receiving the PERFORM postdoctoral fellowship. By leveraging theories and methodologies in computer vision, machine learning, and medical imaging, his research aims to help improve the accuracy and efficiency of clinical diagnosis and medical procedures. With a belief in user-centered design for medical applications, he has created multiple imaging and software tools to enhance the visualization of human anatomy and interaction with medical imaging data, including MRI, ultrasound, and surgical videos. So far, Yiming has worked on a wide range of clinical applications, including Parkinson’s disease, brain tumor, neurovascular conditions, and musculoskeletal disorders.