Medical Imaging and Monitoring
Imaging plays a crucial role in current healthcare practice. It is used in screening to detect diseases early, in making accurate diagnoses, in monitoring patients, and in planning and guiding treatments.
- Medical Image Analysis Research group
- Focus Area leader Josien Pluim
Screening of large populations benefits enormously from computer-aided image analysis, providing automatic triage of patients and second opinions. Imaging is also essential in diagnosis and prognosis; in determining the specifc type of disease, its causes, progress and the outlook for the patient. Based on these outcomes, the most appropriate treatment can be selected for an individual patient.
Determining the best treatment
Imaging is used to create patient- specific treatment plans: for instance, helping to define the outlines of a tumor that is to be removed or irradiated, and in determining the safest, least invasive path to that tumor.
Such treatment plans can be used to guide clinicians, resulting in safer and minimally invasive therapy. After treatment has taken place, imaging is also important: to measure the efficacy of the procedure and, potentially, to switch treatment policies quickly.
Monitoring
Medical monitoring is concerned with the temporal evaluation of a person’s health. This applies to clinical settings, for instance, in an intensive care unit or in evaluating the e ectiveness of a treatment, but also to home settings; for example research of sleep disorders.