Ron Kikinis | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | American, Swiss, Israeli |
Known for | Medical Image Computing |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Medical research, Radiology, Image guided surgery, Medical image computing, Imaging informatics |
Institutions | Harvard Medical School Brigham and Women's Hospital Fraunhofer MEVIS University of Bremen |
Ron Kikinis is an American physician and scientist best known for his research in the fields of imaging informatics, image guided surgery, and medical image computing. He is a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School. Kikinis is the founding director of the Surgical Planning Laboratory in the Department of Radiology at Brigham and Women's Hospital, in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the vice-chair for Biomedical Informatics Research in the Department of Radiology.
Kikinis trained as a both a physician (receiving his M.D. degree from the University of Zurich in 1982) and as a researcher in computer vision at the ETH Zurich in Switzerland. During his studies, he developed an interest in using medical imaging, image processing, visualization, and human-computer interaction to enhance the performance of physicians and improve patient care.
Relocating to the United States in 1988, he joined Brigham and Women's Hospital's Department of Radiology, under the mentorship of Ferenc A. Jolesz. In 1990, Kikinis founded the Surgical Planning Laboratory (SPL) [1] in the Department of Radiology at BWH. The SPL is an academic laboratory focusing on basic and translational research. Kikinis established the SPL as a center for clinical collaboration with other medical specialties in the areas of radiology, surgery, and internal medicine. [2]
Under Kikinis's leadership, the SPL has participated in collaborative research projects with hundreds of physicians, computer scientists, and other researchers at BWH and across the world. The SPL has advanced specific technologies such as image segmentation, [3] data set registration, [4] medical visualization, [5] intraoperative imaging, [6] surgical navigation, [7] and user interfaces; [8] tailored them to address specific medical problems; and disseminated them through open source software development in addition to traditional academic publication. [9] [10]
Kikinis was appointed professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School in 2004. In 2010 he became the Robert Greenes Distinguished Director of Biomedical Informatics in the Department of Radiology at BWH. [11] In May 2020, he was appointed as the B. Leonard Holman Professor at Harvard Medical School, and vice-chair for Biomedical Informatics Research, Department of Radiology, Brigham Health.
Kikinis has directed or participated in a number of major research efforts. He served as the principal investigator (PI) of the National Alliance for Medical Image Computing (NA-MIC) [12] a National Center for Biomedical Computing and a part of the NIH Roadmap Initiative of the National Institutes of Health. NA-MIC's unique organization under the Roadmap Initiative consisted of multiple computer science and medical teams throughout the United States. [13]
Kikinis is PI for the Neuroimaging Analysis Center (NAC) [14] a Biomedical Technology Resource Center funded by the NIBIB. He is director of collaborations for the National Center for Image Guided Therapy (NCIGT) [15] [16] at BWH, an NIH-sponsored clinical research center combining diverse imaging, computational technology, and image guided therapy within the hospital operating room. He is PI for 3DSlicer, a free, open source, cross-platform medical image processing, analysis, and visualization software platform. [17]
In addition to his activities in the US, he was appointed to the position of "Institutsleiter" (head of institute) of Fraunhofer Institute for Medical Image Computing MEVIS [18] and Professor of Medical Image Computing at the computer science department of the University of Bremen in Germany in January 2014, serving until 2020. [19] [20]
Kikinis has also served on numerous boards and advisory committees for research efforts worldwide.
Kikinis is the author or co-author of more than 330 peer-reviewed articles.
A computed tomography scan is a medical imaging technique used to obtain detailed internal images of the body. The personnel that perform CT scans are called radiographers or radiology technologists.
Medical physics deals with the application of the concepts and methods of physics to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human diseases with a specific goal of improving human health and well-being. Since 2008, medical physics has been included as a health profession according to International Standard Classification of Occupation of the International Labour Organization.
Health informatics is the study and implementation of computer structures and algorithms to improve communication, understanding, and management of medical information. It can be viewed as branch of engineering and applied science.
Interventional radiology (IR) is a medical specialty that performs various minimally-invasive procedures using medical imaging guidance, such as x-ray fluoroscopy, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, or ultrasound. IR performs both diagnostic and therapeutic procedures through very small incisions or body orifices. Diagnostic IR procedures are those intended to help make a diagnosis or guide further medical treatment, and include image-guided biopsy of a tumor or injection of an imaging contrast agent into a hollow structure, such as a blood vessel or a duct. By contrast, therapeutic IR procedures provide direct treatment—they include catheter-based medicine delivery, medical device placement, and angioplasty of narrowed structures.
The Hounsfield scale, named after Sir Godfrey Hounsfield, is a quantitative scale for describing radiodensity. It is frequently used in CT scans, where its value is also termed CT number.
Minimally invasive procedures encompass surgical techniques that limit the size of incisions needed, thereby reducing wound healing time, associated pain, and risk of infection. Surgery by definition is invasive, and many operations requiring incisions of some size are referred to as open surgery. Incisions made during open surgery can sometimes leave large wounds that may be painful and take a long time to heal. Advancements in medical technologies have enabled the development and regular use of minimally invasive procedures. For example, endovascular aneurysm repair, a minimally invasive surgery, has become the most common method of repairing abdominal aortic aneurysms in the US as of 2003. The procedure involves much smaller incisions than the corresponding open surgery procedure of open aortic surgery.
Heinz-Otto Peitgen is a German mathematician and was President of Jacobs University from January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2013. Peitgen contributed to the study of fractals, chaos theory, and medical image computing, as well as helping to introduce fractals to the broader public.
Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is the second largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and the largest hospital in the Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Along with Massachusetts General Hospital, it is one of the two founding members of Mass General Brigham, the largest healthcare provider in Massachusetts. Robert Higgins, MD, MSHA serves as the hospital's current president.
3D Slicer (Slicer) is a free and open source software package for image analysis and scientific visualization. Slicer is used in a variety of medical applications, including autism, multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus erythematosus, prostate cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, schizophrenia, orthopedic biomechanics, COPD, cardiovascular disease and neurosurgery.
Oncology is a branch of medicine that deals with the study, treatment, diagnosis, and prevention of cancer. A medical professional who practices oncology is an oncologist. The name's etymological origin is the Greek word ὄγκος (ónkos), meaning "tumor", "volume" or "mass". Oncology is concerned with:
MeVisLab is a cross-platform application framework for medical image processing and scientific visualization. It includes advanced algorithms for image registration, segmentation, and quantitative morphological and functional image analysis. An IDE for graphical programming and rapid user interface prototyping is available.
Cone beam computed tomography is a medical imaging technique consisting of X-ray computed tomography where the X-rays are divergent, forming a cone.
Medical image computing (MIC) is an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of computer science, information engineering, electrical engineering, physics, mathematics and medicine. This field develops computational and mathematical methods for solving problems pertaining to medical images and their use for biomedical research and clinical care.
Ferenc Andras Jolesz was a Hungarian-American physician and scientist best known for his research on image guided therapy, the process by which information derived from diagnostic imaging is used to improve the localization and targeting of diseased tissue to monitor and control treatment during surgical and interventional procedures. He pioneered the field of Magnetic Resonance Imaging-guided interventions and introduced of a variety of new medical procedures based on novel combinations of imaging and therapy delivery.
In medicine, breast imaging is a sub-speciality of diagnostic radiology that involves imaging of the breasts for screening or diagnostic purposes. There are various methods of breast imaging using a variety of technologies as described in detail below. Traditional screening and diagnostic mammography uses x-ray technology and has been the mainstay of breast imaging for many decades. Breast tomosynthesis is a relatively new digital x-ray mammography technique that produces multiple image slices of the breast similar to, but distinct from, computed tomography (CT). Xeromammography and galactography are somewhat outdated technologies that also use x-ray technology and are now used infrequently in the detection of breast cancer. Breast ultrasound is another technology employed in diagnosis and screening that can help differentiate between fluid filled and solid lesions, an important factor to determine if a lesion may be cancerous. Breast MRI is a technology typically reserved for high-risk patients and patients recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Lastly, scintimammography is used in a subgroup of patients who have abnormal mammograms or whose screening is not reliable on the basis of using traditional mammography or ultrasound.
Jeffrey Harold Siewerdsen is an American physicist and biomedical engineer who is a Professor of Imaging Physics at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center as well as Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, Radiology, and Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University.He is among the original inventors of cone-beam CT-guided radiotherapy as well as weight-bearing cone-beam CT for musculoskeletal radiology and orthopedic surgery. His work also includes the early development of flat-panel detectors on mobile C-arms for intraoperative cone-beam CT in image-guided surgery. He developed early models for the signal and noise performance of flat-panel detectors and later extended such analysis to dual-energy imaging and 3D imaging performance in cone-beam CT. He founded the ISTAR Lab in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Carnegie Center for Surgical Innovation at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the Surgical Data Science Program at the Institute for Data Science in Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Lucila Ohno-Machado is a biomedical engineer and Deputy Dean for Biomedical Informatics at the Yale University School of Medicine. She is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the National Academy of Medicine.
Sylvia Katina Plevritis is Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Data Science at Stanford University.
Sergey Pavlovich Morozov is a Russian radiologist and healthcare official.
Robert A. Greenes is a pioneer in the field of biomedical informatics (BMI). His work has focused on knowledge representation, decision support, and human-computer interaction for health and healthcare. He was co-developer of the MUMPS System and Language in the 1960s. He is an Emeritus Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Arizona State University.