Under the direction of Prof. Andreas Melzer, this year’s “4th European Symposium on Focused Ultrasound Therapy” (EUFUS 2017) is held in Leipzig from 26 – 27 October 2017. Experts from 11 European and 5 Asian states, as well as from USA, Canada and Australia talk and discuss about newest research results and state of the art applications in the field of Focused Ultrasound (FUS) and High intensive Focused Ultrasound (HiFU).

Program and Abstract Book EUFUS 2017

The project groups of the Meta-ZIK SONO-RAY – the cooperation between ICCAS, Leipzig and OncoRay, Dresden – performed together with partners such as the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Technology (IBMT, St. Ingbert) a full-day workshop on the subject of ‘Experimantal FUS and HIFU’. About 70 international guests participated in this pre-conference event of the 4th EUFUS Symposium. Amongst other topics they could practically experience the new HIFU system at the Leipzig University Hospital, the building of an ultrasound system and the treatment of cancer cells by ultrasound.

Anfang Oktober 2017 fand ein vom ICCAS organisiertes Tutorial zur Zusammenführung von Visualisierungs- und Analysemethoden für die Auswertung von großen Datenmengen (Big Data) in Phoenix, USA, im Rahmen der IEEE Visualization Conference (VIS 2017) statt. Neben dem ICCAS waren die Magdeburger Otto-von-Guericke Universität, die Technische Universität Darmstadt und das IBM T.J. Watson Research Center als Vortragende beteiligt.

Um zu einer sinnvollen Interpretation von komplexen Bild- und Nichtbilddaten tausender Individuen einer Kohortenstudie zu gelangen, müssen die Daten effizient erhoben, bereinigt, analysiert und visualisiert werden. Das ist eine große Herausforderung. Für die Epidemiologie, die sich mit der Verbreitung, den Ursachen und den Folgen von Krankheiten in der Bevölkerung beschäftigt, ist die Analyse der Kohortendaten jedoch von immenser Bedeutung. Zum einen können Risikofaktoren und deren Einfluss auf bestimmte Krankheiten identifiziert und zum anderen das Krankheitsrisiko festgestellt werden. Zudem profitiert der Gesundheitssektor durch die Analyse der Qualität von Therapien und das Aufdecken von auffälligen Mustern und Trends im Therapieverlauf von dem Big-Data-Ansatz. Über das Tutorial wurden Verknüpfungsmöglichkeiten von Analyse- und Visualisierungstechniken zur Erstellung und Auswertung eines Datenpools vorgestellt. Darüber hinaus wurden offene Forschungsprobleme und aktuelle Trends diskutiert.

Within a ver.di organized workshop union members and interested guests visited the “Intelligent Operating Room” (OR) at ICCAS at the end of September. The future-oriented OR consists of networked medical devices, allows an easy exchange of patient data and provides innovative information and decision assistance systems to support the daily work in hospitals. Besides the technical and medical progress, scientists and guests discussed how the medical staff can be involved to design the digital transformation.

At the annual meeting of the German Association for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (GMDS) e.V., taking place this year in Oldenburg, ICCAS contributes with a lecture on ‘Therapy Decision Support Systems’.

Date: Wed, Sep 20, 2017
Time: 09:00 – 09:15 am
Speaker: Jan Gaebel
Lecture: ‘Considering Information Up-to-Dateness to Increase the Accuracy of Therapy Decision Support Systems’

Abstract

ICCAS‘s Digital Operating Room Summer School (DORS) successfully ended in early September. The feedback of the 26 participants from 12 states was very positive. They were convinced by the well balanced combination of theoretical knowledge transfer, OR-visits and practical units. Physicians of Leipzig University Hospital and Heart Center Leipzig as well as foreign experts supported the extensive summer school program, certified with 38 European CME-Credits (EACCME®). The course contents included computer assisted applications in the fields of ENT-, Neuro-, Visceral- and Heart-surgery, Urology and Radiology, the Digital Patient Model, medical robotics and technologies for the future operating room. The next DORS is scheduled from August 27 – 31, 2018.

At this year’s Conference of the Societies of Biomedical Engineering (BMT) and Medical Physics, ICCAS is represented with a special session on Model-based therapy.
Furthermore, there are contributions on the topics ‘Hyperspectral Imaging’ and ‘Combined PET-MR guided focused ultrasound and radiation therapy’.

This event takes place from September 10-13, 2017 at the International Congress Center Dresden and particularly reflects the increasing networking of biomedical engineering and medical physics in clinical diagnostics and therapy.

Special session talks
Talk Hypersepctral Imaging
Poster FUS

At 28th August 2017, the fourth Digital Operating Room Summer School successfully started. Prof. Andreas Melzer and Prof. Thomas Neumuth are very pleased with the large number of international guests. Besides Germany more than half of the 24 participants come from other European countries, furthermore from Japan, the United States of America, Iraq and Tunisia. Well-known and internationally accepted experts wait for them to impart their knowledge in lectures and hands-on-sessions and to be available for questions and discussions.

The opening topic of the interesting summer school week is the computer assisted surgery at ICCAS. Due to a close and successful cooperation with several clinics of the Leipzig University Hospital participants gain a realistic insight into important subjects like endoscopy challenges, the digital patient model with the tumorboard as a practical example as well as medical robotics in real clinical situations. Another important partner is the Heart Center Leipzig, where practical experience of image guided interventions is passed on. Participants get an extensive and close view of many present and relevant subject areas of computer assisted medicine by the varied summer school program. In the eveningsocial activities are offered to establish contacts and for knowledge exchange.

Event link

Das erste Statustreffen des im März 2017 gestarteten Verbundprojektes IMPACT – Mobiles System zur notfallmedizinischen Diagnose und Überwachung des Pneumothorax – fand Ende August im ICCAS statt. Hier diskutierten gemeinsam mit den Wissenschaftlern des ICCAS die Vertreter der weiteren Projektpartner: Fritz Stephan GmbH, ITP GmbH sowie Fakultät für Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik der Hochschule für Technik Wirtschaft und Kultur Leipzig den Projektverlauf und zukünftige Arbeitsschritte. Ebenfalls vor Ort waren Vertreter des Projektträgers VDI Technologiezentrum GmbH.

Erste Ergebnisse im Projekt sind die laufende Anforderungsanalyse, umfangreiche Vorarbeiten zu technischen Arbeitspaketen und zur Aufzeichnung experimenteller und klinischer Daten sowie die Präzisierung der technischen Anforderungen. In weiteren Arbeitsschritten soll die Anforderungsanalyse abgeschlossen werden und der erste Prototyp zur experimentellen Messung fertiggestellt werden. Das nächste Treffen ist für März 2018 geplant.

In the scope of the MedInfo world congress in Hangzhou (China) the research group Digital Patient- and Process Model will give a tutorial on “Model-Based Therapeutic Decision Support”. Additionally, posters on “Towards the Consideration of Diagnostic Delay in Model-Based Clinical Decision Support” and “A Guide for Constructing Bayesian Network Graphs of Cancer Treatment Decisions” will be presented.

Tutorial: 21.08.2017