Project : epidaure
Section: Other Grants and Activities
National projects
ACI Masse de Donnée AGIR
Participants : Xavier Pennec [correspondant], Tristan Glatard, Johan Montagnat [I3S].
Grid Analysis of Radiological Images Data http://www.aci-agir.org/ (in French: Analyse Globalisées des données d'Imagerie Radiologique - AGIR) is a multi-disciplinary research project with focus on leveraging medical imaging algorithms trough grid systems, funded by the French Research Ministry through the ACI (Action Concertée Incitative) Masses de Données.
AGIR gathers researchers in Computer Science, physics and medecine from CNRS, INRIA, University, INSERM, and hospitals. Its goals are to to define and validate new grid services that address some of the requirements of complex medical image processing and data manipulation application ; and new medical image processing algorithms that take advantage of the underlying grid infrastructure for compute and data intensive needs.
Data and computing grids are an opportunity to enlarge the impact of image processing tools and to transfer this experimental research to clinical practice. The availability of algorithms and datasets will ease the development, prototyping, and the validation of algorithms. Advanced users will be able to experiment and compare existing techniques on common data sets. Finally, grid-enabled algorithms will be accessible for clinical use.
Analysing large images at a sufficient speed to support interactive use requires substantial computing power. Combining the medical user expertise and the resource of the Grid in compute and data intensive tasks is a promising way to transfer experimental research first to clinical practice, and then to routine clinical practice.
The project started in september 2004, and supports the PhD of T. Glatard, jointly supervised by X. Pennec at EPIDAURE and J. Montagnat at RAINBOW (I3S, Nice University).
GIS Prions
The GIS-PRIONS ( http://www-sop.inria.fr/epidaure/Collaborations/GIS-PRIONS/indexNew.html) project involves a national collaboration between INSERM (Unit 360, Paris), CNRS (Lena, Paris and Unit 6612, Marseille), the Department of Neuroradiology, the Laboratory of Neuropathology and the National Reference Cell of CJD of the La Pitié Salpétrière Hospital in Paris, and the Epidaure Research Group at INRIA, Sophia Antipolis. The study aims to determine the role of adding Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and Diffusion Imaging to the conventional imaging modalities towards an earlier Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) diagnosis. Another major goal of this project is the differentiation of different types of CJD.
Our study allows the accurate detection of abnormal MR intensities (prompted by the clinicians) in the deep grey nuclei of the brain of CJD patients and the classification of intensities in sporadic CJD FLAIR images with a more significant hypersignal in the caudate nuclei (10/10 cases) and putamen (6/10) than thalami. The quantification of the higher hyperintensities in the pulvinar of variant CJD patients led to the definition of new MR-based measures to differentiate between CJD cases and healthy controls and between sporadic CJD and variant CJD cases. Similar conclusions resulted through the quantification of metabolite variantions in spectroscopy data between CJD patients and healthy controls [74], [66].
Consulting for Industry
Nicholas Ayache is member of the Scientific Council of Dosisoft (Paris), a subsidiary from the Gustave Roussy Institute and the Curie Institute (Paris). He is also a member of the Strategic Council of QuantifiCare. He is scientific consultant for the company Mauna Kea Technologies (Paris).
Hervé Delingette is a scientific consultant for the company Philips Research France and he is member of the scientific council of the company QuantifiCare.
Grégoire Malandain is a member of the Technical council of the company Dosisoft (Paris), a subsidiary from the Gustave Roussy Institute and the Curie Institute (Paris).
Collaboration with national hospitals
Here we provide a list of research centers in national hospitals with whom we collaborate in common research projects.
IRCAD, hôpitaux de Strasbourg
Pr. Marescaux and L. Soler : hepatic surgery simulation [48], segmentation of abdominal structures from CT scan images and augmented reality for guidance in hepatic surgery (see section 6.3.4 and [27], [43], [77], [78], [81]).
Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpétrière, Paris
Dr. J. Yelnik (INSERM U.289) and E. Bardinet (CNRS) are our partners in a collaboration with Medtronic. Dr. D. Dormont and Dr. J.-P. Brandel are our collaborators for the GIS Infections à prions.
Centre anti-cancer Antoine Lacassagne, Hôpital Pasteur, Nice
Pr. Jacques Darcourt co-supervises the thesis of Mauricio Reyes on breathing motion correction for PET reconstruction (cf section 6.2.7) [91]. Dr. Bondiau has prepared his PhD (defended in october 2004) within our project [25], and participates in our research on atlas registration for radiotherapy planning [53], [31] and on tumour growth simulation [55].
CHU de Nice, Hôpital Pasteur
We continue our collaboration with Pr. M. Chatel, Dr. C. Lebrun-Frenay and C. Bensa of the neurology department, and with Dr. Chanalet of the radiology, within the framework of a study on the temporal evolution of MS lesion load [58], [52], [39], [59], [72], [60], [61]
