Biomedical Engineering

ICTEAM is involved in Transcriptomics and High-Throughput Technologies. This research activity focuses on the identification of biomarkers from gene expression data, as measured by high-throughput technologies such as high-density DNA microarrays or next generation sequencing platforms. These biomarkers may be used for medical diagnosis, prognosis or prediction of the response to a treatment. Our research objectives also include the link between transcriptomic data and functional analysis from a system biology viewpoint. Several collaborations exist on those topics with the UCLouvain Institute for Experimental and Clinical Research in the context of cancer research, allergy prediction among newborns and early diagnosis of arthritis.

Current projects also involve analysis and filtering of biomedical data and signals. It concerns a wide variety of applications based on the expert knowledge on data analysis and processing to the biomedical field:

• analysis of biomedical signals (including ECG, EEG, etc.) for automatic pre-diagnosis
• filtering of medical scan images for contour extraction

Several research projects aim at developing biosensors and biomedical applications of electronics:

• application to monitoring of respiration (micro-systems)
• low power systems for biomedical applications
• security and cryptography for biomedical applications

ICTEAM pursues research on image processing tools and applications for the use in various medical contexts (radiotherapy, proton therapy, brachytherapy, surgery) and at different stages of treatment (planning, execution and follow-up). The research focuses on:

• rigid and non-rigid image registrations methods for 2D-3D and 3D-3D images both for single and multiple modalities as well as for surfaces;
• segmentation techniques either using prior knowledge (atlas-based) or allowing user interaction (graph cuts)
• human-computer interactions to create intuitive user interfaces for the clinical world.

Another field of research is the solving of inverse problems from generalized sparsity prior (with applications in optics and X-ray CT), Compressed Sensing (theory and application), theoretical questions linked to the design of new sensors (for computer vision), applied mathematics for astronomical and biomedical signal processing questions, and representation of data on strange spaces (e.g., sphere, manifolds, or graphs). Besides, research is pursued on EEG reconstruction, transcranial magnetic stimulation, as well as on the use of functional imaging for measuring motion disorders.

The institute is also involved in shape analysis for protein docking. This includes 3D mesh processing and the analysis of protein surface properties.

ICTEAM also has research activities investigating the neural control movement. These activities are based on experimental, clinical and modelling approaches. Among the ongoing projects:

• interaction between vision and the neural control of movement
• experimental and modelling study of eye and head movements as well as eye-hand coordination
• clinical studies: the influence of Duane Retraction Syndrome and Cerebral Palsy on vision and eye movements (St Luc Hospital and foundation JED).
• dextrous manipulation in micro- and hyper-gravity (supported by Prodex and ESA)
• the role of internal models: prediction and anticipation in smooth pursuit and saccade programming