Speaker: Ralph Brecheisen (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands)
In 2005 the university hospital of Maastricht (Netherlands) acquired a Medtronic N20 Polestar, a mobile, low-field, intraoperative MRI scanner which can be used in a standard operating room. To make better use of this scanner and enhance its images with high-quality preoperative imaging data the hospital started a close collaboration with the biomedical image analysis group of the technical university of Eindhoven (prof. Bart ter Haar Romeny). The goal is to define research projects related to image-guided neurosurgery that involve preoperative imaging, intraoperative MRI or a combination of both. For this purpose, the image-guided neurosurgery group was founded in 2007. This group is directly located at the university hospital of Maastricht and therefore at only a minute's distance from the neurosurgeons, one of whom (a resident) is a part-time but active member of this group working on his own PhD. This KV presentation will discuss the image-guided neurosurgery group and some of its past and current projects. Special attention will be given to deep brain stimulation and multimodal visualization, the latter of which was a master's thesis project of the presenter Ralph Brecheisen. His own PhD project in the image-guided neurosurgery group has only recently started and is still ill-defined but will focus on visualization for neurosurgery applications. The main purpose of his visit to Vienna is to find ideas for research and opportunities for collaboration, possibly in combination with the university hospital of Maastricht.