ABSTRACT: Image-guided interventional systems often combine high definition diagnostic imaging with interventional modalities such as ultrasound or cone-beam CT to facilitate the targeting of specific tissue within the body. They can also play a role in drug discovery and the optimization of tailored therapies. Imaging modalities such as 3D MRI, CT or PET offer functional or metabolic data not otherwise available to the operator during minimally invasive image-guided procedures, such as for liver ablations or prostate biopsies, thereby reducing the risk of complications and improving patient safety. In this talk, we will provide an overview of medical computer vision technologies involved during each phase of a patient’s cancer care cycle, such as before, during and after an intervention. Our research first focuses on lesion identification, organ and tumor segmentation algorithms, enabling a more accurate roadmap during the planning stage of a procedure. We will also present our work in instrument tracking technologies, as well as real-time multimodal registration to ease the workflow for interventional radiologists during the guidance phase of the procedure. Finally, our research includes the development of monitoring therapy delivery (ex: tissue thermometry), thereby reducing the risk of tumor recurrence by ensuring accurate coverage during the procedure. In the future, fusion-guided procedures will become not only a tool for drug discovery but also a vital tool for establishing specific drug combinations for particular tumor responses and multiparametric tissue characterization.

Samuel Kadoury is an assistant professor in the Computer and Software Engineering Department at Polytechnique Montreal, member of the Biomedical Engineering Institute at the University of Montreal and researcher at the Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Center. He currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Medical Imaging and Assisted Interventions at Polytechnique Montreal. He obtained his Bachelors in Computer Engineering in 2002 from Polytechnique Montreal and his Masters in Electrical Engineering from McGill in 2005. After a one-year stay at Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, NJ, he returned to Montreal to complete his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, focusing on orthopaedic imaging.  He completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Ecole Centrale de Paris and worked as a clinical research scientist for Philips Research North America at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD from 2010 to 2012. Prof. Kadoury has published over 60 peer-reviewed papers in leading journals and conferences in fields such as biomedical imaging, computer vision, radiology and neuroimaging. He holds 4 US patents in image-guided interventions, has participated in the technological transfer of multiple research projects to commercial products, and was awarded the NIH merit award for his work on prostate cancer.