[Imageworld] PhD Studentship in Medical Image Registration (University of Nottingham)

[Mark Gooding]

PhD Studentship in Medical Image Registration
University of Nottingham - School of Psychology

Applications are invited for a Ph.D. studentship at the University of
Nottingham (see: www.nottingham.ac.uk), in partnership with Mirada
Medical Ltd. (see: www.mirada-medical.com), within the framework of
the Dorothy Hodgkin Postgraduate Awards (DHPA). DHPA (see:
www.rcuk.ac.uk/hodgkin/default.htm) is an industrially co-funded UK
scheme to bring outstanding students from outside the European Union
to come and study for PhDs in top rated UK research facilities. The
initiative was launched by the UK Prime Minister in 2003.

The project is concerned with medical image registration, that is the
process of establishing correspondences between two or more images. It
involves transforming the images until the relevant anatomical
structures and/or functional features are correctly aligned. In
medical imaging, such techniques can be used to compensate for changes
in the patient’s appearance in the image due to, for example, motion,
positioning, weight loss, breathing and so forth. One known limitation
of the current state of the art in medical image registration is that
the transformations estimated by such algorithms can be biologically
implausible, for example bones can be non-rigidly deformed. Techniques
have been proposed to overcome such limitations however they are often
somewhat ad-hoc and application specific, for example bones have to be
segmented prior to or during registration. In this project, we propose
to incorporate prior knowledge about biologically plausible
deformations directly into the registration process.

The successful student will be based in the School of Psychology at
the University of Nottingham within the medical image analysis
laboratory of Dr. A. Pitiot. They will be jointly supervised by Dr. T.
Kadir from Mirada Medical (Oxford, UK), with regular visits to Oxford
as well as an extended summer stay. In addition to collaborating with
both the Nottingham and Oxford teams, the student will also have the
opportunity to attend short courses, workshops and international
conferences.

Students should have a Masters or equivalent degree in image
processing (preferably medical image processing), computer science
(applied mathematics) or a related field from a reputable academic
institution, as well as software development skills and the ability to
work within a team.

This joint Medical Research Council/Mirada Medical funded position
provides tuition fees and a tax-free stipend each year (£13,590 in
2010/11) and is available from 1 October 2010 for a period of three
years. Due to the specificity of the DHPA, this studentship is only
open to student nationals from Turkey, Iraq, Russia, Hong Kong, China,
Brazil, South Africa, India and the developing world, as defined by
the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD. More information
about eligibility can be found at:
www.rcuk.ac.uk/hodgkin/eligibility.htm.

Informal enquiries may be addressed to Dr A Pitiot, Email:
alain.pitiot at nottingham.ac.uk.

Applications should be in the form of a detailed cv, a letter of
motivation and the names and addresses of two referee. Please send (by
Email) to Dr A Pitiot, Email: alain.pitiot at nottingham.ac.uk. Please
quote ref. SCI/856. Closing date: 30 June 2010.