[visionlist] One PhD Student Position in Medical Image Segmentation

[Philippe C. Cattin]

Ph.D. Student Position in Medical Image Segmentation
at the University of Basel

Closing date: January 31st, 2011

Title: Quantification of Atrophies in the Spinal Cord

The available challenging PhD Student position is a collaboration 
between the Clinical Trial Unit (CTU) and the Medical Image Analysis 
Group at the University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland. The project 
involves both theoretical and applied research aspects, and will be 
performed in close collaboration with researchers and medical doctors of 
the University Hospital.

The spinal cord is a vital nervous structure of the human body. It can 
undergo morphological changes caused for example by either pathologies 
or trauma. Of particular interest in this context are the atrophies of 
the nervous tissue that can often be observed in e.g. multiple-sclerosis 
patients or in trauma patients such as paraplegia and tetraplegia. The 
state-of-the-art methods for segmenting the spinal cord require 
substantial and time-consuming manual intervention. The focus of this 
work will thus be on automating this tedious manual segmentation as much 
as possible.

The aim of this work is to develop a software tool that allows to 
automatically segment the spinal cord and derive quantitative measures 
(area, average intensity, shape,...) that allow to accurately quantify 
the progress of the disease. Besides the quantification of the atrophies 
it is also important to spatially correlate their progression over a 
longer period of time in longitudinal studies. This then allows to 
assess the effects of either a specific drug as in multiple-sclerosis or 
the effect of physical training on the progression of the degenerative 
processes. After morphological segmentation of the spinal cord, novel MR 
sequences, such as MT, will be evaluated for their applicability to 
further quantify degenerations of the spinal cord.

The candidate must have a Master degree, strong communication skills, 
the ability to combine basic research activities with the needs of 
clinicians and be willing to work in a clinical environment. We are 
looking for a motivated, proactive person with a background in image 
segmentation, biomedical engineering, physics, mathematics or other 
related fields. The candidate will have solid programming skills in C++ 
, MATLAB and/or Python as well as a good background in general 
engineering mathematics.

Salary / Duration:
The position is offered for three years with a salary of approximately 
44kCHF/year.

Location:
The PhD work will be carried out at the University of Basel, 
Switzerland. http://miac.unibas.ch

Collaborators:
Prof. Dr. med. Wilhelm Radue, CTU/MIAC, University Hospital Basel

Person to contact:
Interested candidates should send their resumes with references and 
school transcripts to:

Prof. Dr. Philippe Cattin
Medical Image Analysis Center, University of Basel
Spitalstrasse 21, CH-4031 Basel, Switzerland
email: philippe.cattin at unibas.ch
http://miac.unibas.ch