Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases are one of the leading causes of death worldwide, with an incidence of 17.9 million deaths per year. The primary therapeutic solution is endovascular interventions, which owe their success to significant advantages, such as minimal invasiveness and low costs. However, these procedures are limited by their complexity, requiring extensive clinician training and access to specialized facilities. To deliver treatment, the clinician must navigate long, thin-tube devices, such as catheters and guidewires, through the patient's arteries, controlling them from the proximal end positioned at the entrance of the patient's vessel. This already challenging task is further complicated by the limited guidance the clinician has available, which is only provided by 2D fluoroscopic images. Furthermore, the acquisition of these images requires the use of X-rays, dangerous for the health of both the patient and the clinician, and the visibility of vessels is dependent on contrast agents, which can be harmful to the patient’s kidneys.
To address these limitations, this manuscript proposes solutions to facilitate the intervention, through the development of methods able to offer the clinician more support during certain phases of the intervention while automating others. A simplified procedure can indeed result in lower surgical time and, as a consequence, lower X-ray exposure for both the patient and the caregiver. Two main systems have been developed: one that enhances fluoroscopic images and another that autonomously navigates surgical tools. The first one is essentially an assistance system, which overlaps the classical fluoroscopic images with information about the anatomy that is being navigated and shows the clinicians the predicted outcome of their actions before they perform them. The second one is a Deep Reinforcement Learning controller which aims to autonomously perform the procedure by controlling an endovascular surgical robot. Currently, these robots function only as leader-follower devices, which are not able to provide additional support to the caregiver during the procedure.
In tests conducted on a phantom in the context of a user study, the enhanced fluoroscopic system allowed for a 56% intervention time reduction. The autonomous controller achieved a success rate of over 95%, even when tested on anatomies with characteristics completely different from the training models.

Jury Composition:

Reviewers:

• Pr. Franziska Mathis-Ullrich, University of Erlangen–Nuremberg
• Pr. Emmanuel Vander Poorten, University of KU Leuven

Examiners :

• Pr. Philippe Cattin, University of Basel

Supervisors:

•     - Pr. Stéphane Cotin, Inria Strasbourg, University of Strasbourg
•     - Pr. Florent Nageotte, University of Strasbourg
•     - Pr. Michel Duprez, Inria Strasbourg, University of Strasbourg

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to develop a new full-field optical coherence tomography (FF-OCT) system for imaging biological tissues in-vivo. This experimental system combines full-field optical coherence tomography (FF-OCT) with an off-axis interferometry technique. With this method, it is possible to simultaneously obtain amplitude and phase images from a single interferogram acquisition. The amplitude images allow for tomographic imaging of biological tissues in vivo with micrometer-level resolution, demonstrating the system’s capability to capture images in in-vivo scenarios.

Direct access to phase images also offers the possibility to incorporate additional contrast modalities, such as elastography. During this thesis, elastography was integrated into the experimental system, enabling the acquisition of stiffness maps of samples. This approach was successfully validated on agarose samples, which mimic the mechanical properties of biological tissues.

Jury Members

• Reviewer: Prof. Arnaud Dubois, Université Paris-Saclay, Charles Fabry Laboratory
• • Reviewer: Prof. Gilles Tessier, Sorbonne University, Vision Institute
• • Examiner: Dr. Serge Miemon, ONERA - Paris Eye Imaging
• • Supervisor: Prof. Nadia Bahlouli, Université de Strasbourg, ICube
• • Co-supervisor: Prof. Sybille Facca, Université de Strasbourg, ICube, University Hospitals of Strasbourg, Hand Surgery Department
• • Advisor: Dr. Amir Na

For more information about our Master's program, check out our Master's training page.

For specific questions that have not been answered on the website, please contact iti-healthtech-master@unistra.fr.

Mr. Abou Hamdan is completing his PhD under the supervision of Siham Touchal (ICube MMB), Hamdi Jmal (ICube MMB), and Delphine Wagner (ICube MMB, Department of Dental Surgery at UNISTRA).

For more information about our Master's program, check out our Master's training page.

For specific questions that have not been answered on the website, please contact iti-healthtech-master@unistra.fr.

Final project attributions will take place during the week of September 23rd and the list of selected projects will be available on our Master's research project page.

His poster deals with the "DEVELOPMENT OF A LOW-COST, 3D-PRINTED PHANTOM FOR DEDICATED 0.31T MRI SCANNER".

This work presents a phantom designed for MRI quality control training. This low-cost phantom, produced by 3D printing, is adaptable to all clinical MRI equipment and meets complex specifications.

His project partners are the ICube UMR 7357 laboratory, Strasbourg, France, and the IHU Strasbourg, Institute of Image-Guided Surgery, Strasbourg, France.

This work of the Interdisciplinary Thematic Institute HealthTech, as part of the ITI 2021-2028 program of the University of Strasbourg, CNRS and Inserm, was supported by IdEx Unistra (ANR-10-IDEX-0002) and SFRI (STRAT’US project, ANR-20-SFRI-0012) under the framework of the French Investments for the Future Program.

see the original release on the ICube newsreel: https://icube.unistra.fr/actualites-agenda/actualites/actualite/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=25925&cHash=7a9f8d103edd1d74c0be7c11c1402933

His poster deals with the NUMERICAL STUDY OF HINGE FRACTURE IN DISTAL FEMORAL OSTETOMY BY XFEM.

Distal femoral osteotomy (DFO) is a surgical procedure aimed to correct valgus misalignment of the knee, often accompanied by osteoarthritis of its lateral compartment. However, hinge fracture during OFD can significantly affect postoperative results. The goal of this research project is to evaluate the effectiveness of K-Wires in preventing hinge fracture during the opening phase of OFD. The OFD opening operation was modeled in Abaqus software using the extended finite element method (XFEM).

This work of the Interdisciplinary Thematic Institute HealthTech, as part of the ITI 2021-2028 program of the University of Strasbourg, CNRS and Inserm, was supported by IdEx Unistra (ANR-10-IDEX-0002) and SFRI (STRAT’US project, ANR-20-SFRI-0012) under the framework of the French Investments for the Future Program.

see the original release on the ICube newsreel: https://icube.unistra.fr/actualites-agenda/actualites/actualite/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=25927&cHash=65798d707840aab6205be866b517b077

For more information about the week, take a look at EUCOR's recap post: Winter School - Digital Healthcare Entrepreneurship.

Cette conférence ouverte à tous se déroulera le Lundi 22 Janvier 2024 de 17h00 à 19h00 au sein de l'amphithéâtre du Collège Doctorale Européen (CDE) (46 Boulevard de la Victoire 67000 Strasbourg). Elle sera suivie d'un moment convivial autour d'un pot.

Le séminaire sera en français. 

This event will be held in French. 

As the leading European partnering event, MedFIT provides the ideal environment to help industry players to source early-stage assets, to facilitate the emergence of collaborative projects between big players, public research institutions, start-ups and SMEs, to increase licensing opportunities, to obtain funding and to facilitate market access.

https://www.medfit-event.com/

Abstract: RF pulses play a key role in MRI. They have to be selective, robust to B0 and B1 field inhomogeneities while being compliant with regulations on Specific Absorption Rates. Optimal Control is a powerful tool allowing for the integration of these constraints to numerically find the best solutions. The presentation will introduce optimal control for the generation of RF pulses for the aforementioned applications while also presenting recent applications such as contrast optimization and magnetic resonance elastography (MRE).

Biography: After studying physics, Kevin TSE VE KOON defended his thesis in non-linear physics in 2007 at the University of Burgundy. He discovered the biomedical world during a post-doctorate on cardiovascular modeling at the LTSI in Rennes, before joining the CREATIS laboratory and Lyon 1 University as a Senior Lecturer in 2010. Since then, his research has focused on MRI methodology development, with an emphasis on magnetic resonance elastography. He has also been in charge of the CREATIS laboratory's PILoT multimodal imaging platform since 2022.

It will be in conjunction with the Computer-Assisted Radiology and Surgery (CARS). IPCAI is endorsed by the International Society of Computer-aided Surgery (ISCAS) and the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Interventions (MICCAI) Society. IPCAI will be a hybrid event with on-site and remote attendance, and we encourage on-site attendance whenever possible.
 

Conference information

IPCAI is one of the most important venues for disseminating innovative research in computer-assisted surgery and minimally invasive interventions. Now in its 14^th year, IPCAI is an interdisciplinary conference that attracts clinicians, engineers and computer science researchers from various backgrounds, including machine learning, data science, robotics, computer vision, medical imaging and sensing technologies. IPCAI fosters connections and showcases high quality research in a unique and focused two-day event. The conference is formatted specifically to actively engage the attendees.

Regular paper submissions

We call for high quality, original and unpublished paper submissions that describe innovative methodologies, clinical applications or clinical validations of computer-assisted intervention (CAI) systems. The submission should fall within the broad areas of interest of CAI covering the following:

• Surgical data science
• Machine learning for CAI and surgical robotics
• Interventional imaging and image fusion
• Tracking and navigation
• Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality for CAI
• Intraoperative visualization, user interfaces and human-computer interaction
• Surgical workflow, activity and skill analysis
• Intervention planning and simulation
• Systems and software
• Surgical and interventional robotics
• Evaluation and validation

All regular paper submissions should be formatted in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LCNS) style with a maximum of 12 pages (approximately 5000 words) including the abstract, tables, references, and figure captions. The abstract should be in a structured format (Purpose, Methods, Results and Conclusion) and should not exceed 250 words.

Authors of regular papers should register an ‘intention to submit’ using Microsoft’s Conference Management Toolkit (CMT) with a paper title and abstract. Submissions are reviewed in a single-blind process. Accepted papers will be transferred to the International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery (IJCARS) for further revisions and publication as full paper in the IJCARS IPCAI Special Issue or (if required) in a regular journal issue.

 Intention to submit deadline (for regular papers): 28 Oct. 2022

 Submission deadline (for regular papers): 4 Nov. 2022

Long abstract submissions

Long abstract submissions are intended to showcase novel ideas, software platforms, or recent breakthroughs in a shorter format compared to regular papers, with limited or preliminary experimental validation. Long abstract submissions should fall within the same areas of interest of CAI as regular papers. Submissions are reviewed in a single-blind process and should be formatted in the LNCS style, up to 4 pages (1500 words).

 Submission deadline (for long abstracts): 13 Jan. 2023

Committee

• Program Chairs: Toby Collins, Qi Dou, Mathias Unberath
• General Chairs: Nicolas Padoy, Tim Salcudean, Raphael Sznitman
• Steering Committee: Purang Abolmaesumi, Kevin Cleary, Gabor Fichtinger, Makoto Hashizume, David Hawkes, Pierre Jannin, Leo Joskowicz, Ron Kikinis, Heinz Lemke, Lena Maier-Hein, Kensaku Mori, Parvin Mousavi, Nassir Navab, Terry Peters, Ichiro Sakuma, Stefanie Speidel, Danail Stoyanov, Russell Taylor

Further information on the IPCAI 2023 website

Please note that the conference will be held in French.

This study seeks to draw connections between the grant proposal peer-review and the gender representation in research consortia. We examined the implementation of a multi- disciplinary, pan-European funding scheme— EUROpean COllaborative RESearch Scheme (2003–2015)—and the reviewers’ materials that this generated. EUROCORES promoted investigator-driven, multinational collaborative research in multiple scientific areas and brought together 9158 Principal Investigators (PI) who teamed up in 1347 international consortia that were sequentially evaluated by 467 expert panel members and 1862 external reviewers. We found systematically unfavourable evaluations for consortia with a higher proportion of female PIs. This gender effect was evident in the evaluation outcomes of both panel members and reviewers: applications from consortia with a higher share of female scientists were less successful in panel selection and received lower scores from external reviewers. Interestingly, we found a systematic discrepancy between the evaluative language of written review reports and the scores assigned by reviewers that works against consortia with a higher share of female participants. Reviewers did not perceive female scientists as being less competent in their comments, but they were negatively sensitive to a high female ratio within a consortium when scoring the proposed research project.

There will be a zoom transmission:

Topic: seminaire Llerena
Time: May 23, 2023 10:30 AM Paris

Join Zoom Meeting
https://cnrs.zoom.us/j/96816026319?pwd=Z3lEQmF2RXgrN29pcFRCSDFXc0hXQT09

Meeting ID: 968 1602 6319
Passcode: 7E1kjg

The Grand Est Franco-German University Prizes are awarded in six categories for student work and projects carried out with a view to cooperation and interculturality between France and Germany. 

The call for papers is currently open:

• Full paper submission: January 15^th, 2023
• Provided Acceptance notification: February 26^th, 2023
• Final paper submission: March 26^th, 2023
   

 The EquinOCS system for registration and sending your papers is now open and can be accessed here.

 A selection of presented papers will be invited with extended version for a Special Issue in Machines, entitled "New Trends in Medical and Service Robots-Selected Papers from MESROB 2023".

Check out the conference website for further information