Plenary Speakers
Richard L. Ehman
Topic: MR Elastography and the Introduction of New Clinical Imaging Technologies
Richard Ehman is Professor of Radiology at the Mayo Clinic and serves as a member of the Mayo Clinic Board of Governors. He divides his time between clinical practice, education, and research. His main clinical activity is Magnetic Resonance Imaging. His research program is focused on developing new imaging technologies. Professor Ehman has been Principal Investigator of several NIH grants and holds more than 30 US and foreign patents for his inventions. He was awarded the Gold Medal of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine in 1995 for his research contributions, an honorary Doctor of Science Degree by the University of Saskatchewan in 2000, and the Outstanding Researcher Award of the Radiological Society of North America in 2006. He has served as Chair of the Radiology and Nuclear Medicine Study Section of the NIH, and is currently a member of the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the NIH. He is an Associate Editor of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, and a member of the editorial boards of several other journals. He served as President of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine in 2002-2003.
Clemens Lowik
Topic: Molecular imaging and applications
Clemens Lowik is a Professor in Molecular Endocrinology and Molecular Imaging at the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands. His current research consists of the molecular mechanisms involved in sclerostin action, mesenchymal stem cell differentiation, and bone metastasis of breast and prostate cancer. The molecular imaging technologies he is using in living mice are based on non-invasive whole body 2D and 3D optical imaging (bioluminescence and fluorescence) to follow gene expression, cell differentiation, and cell fate, and all kinds of other cellular and molecular processes. Optical imaging is now also combined with other imaging modalities such as fast CT and ultra high-field MRI. Professor Lowik is one of the pioneers on this technology, and he is one of the sub-coordinators of the European Molecular Imaging Laboratories (EMIL), a European Network of Excellence. He is also one of the founders of the European Society of Molecular Imaging and its current vice president.
Jason Swedlow
Topic: Challenges in bioimage informatics
Jason Swedlow earned a BA in Chemistry from Brandeis University in 1982 and a PhD in Biophysics from University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), in 1994. After a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr T. J. Mitchison at UCSF and then Harvard Medical School, he established his own laboratory in 1998 at the Wellcome Trust Biocentre, University of Dundee, as a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow. He was awarded a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship in 2002 and named Professor of Quantitative Cell Biology in 2007. His lab focuses on studies of mitotic chromosome structure and dynamics and has published numerous leading papers in the field. He is co-founder of the Open Microscopy Environment, a community-led open source software project that develops specifications and tools for biological imaging and participates as Faculty and Co-Organizer of the Analytical and Quantitative Microscopy Course at MBL.
Milan Sonka
Topic: Challenges in biomedical image analysis
Milan Sonka received his PhD degree in 1983 from the Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic. He is Professor and Chair of the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Professor of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, and Radiation Oncology at the University of Iowa, Co-director of Iowa Institute for Biomedical Imaging, IEEE Fellow, and AIMBE Fellow. His research interests include medical imaging and knowledge-based image analysis with emphasis on cardiovascular, pulmonary, orthopedic, and ophthalmic image analysis. He is the first author of three editions of Image Processing, Analysis and Machine Vision book (1993, 1998, 2008) and co-authored or co-edited 18 books/proceedings. He has published more than 80 journal papers and over 340 other publications. He is Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, member of the Editorial Board of the Medical Image Analysis journals. Professor Sonka is a co-founder of VIDA Diagnostics, a start-up company developing novel image-analysis tools for comprehensive quantitative assessment of pulmonary morphology and function and a co-founder of Medical Imaging Applications, LLC, a company that develops and markets cardiovascular ultrasound image analysis research and clinical-care software.