Thomas Baun, Jens Jørgen Flaaris and Morten Volden
The Danish Students winning MEDICON's Best Student Paper Award
| The IXth MEDICON conference in Pula, Croatia 2001, had more than 40 contributions made by students from around Europe who entered in the student competition. Three of these students: Thomas Baun (26 years), Jens Jørgen Flaaris (25 years), and Morten Volden (29 years), all from the department for medical informatics and image analysis at Aalborg University, Denmark entered their article. The title of the paper was: "Surface Modelling of Blood Vessels Based on 3D Medical Images". It presented a method for automatic surface modelling of blood vessels in the brain from different medical image modalities. This paper won one of three equal prizes for best student paper. |
Today, all three are working within the field of medical informatics. Thomas Baun is currently employed in a private firm implementing electronic patient record software systems for the Danish health sector. After MEDICON 2001 and their graduation in July 13 2001, Jens Jørgen Flaaris and Morten Volden continued working at Aalborg University and are currently working as research assistants in a project called the Virtual Brain Project.
The long-term goal of the Virtual Brain Project is to develop a simulator where surgeons are able to rehearse procedures on specific patients. The virtual brain project has four focus areas of research. The current primary focus area is automatic segmentation of brain structures from medical images, in order to eventually be able to make patient specific simulations. The second focus area is deformable models that assigns the segmented structures dynamic properties. Currently the focus is on the so-called Finite Element Models (FEM). Third area is design of Haptic Interfaces to allow the user to virtually interact with the deformable models through a surgery instrument. The last area is a visual Interface, which is the visual equivalent to the haptic interfaces.
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Jens Jørgen Flaaris and Morten Volden have continued their work with modelling blood vessels within the virtual brain project. More specifically they have been working with the modelling of aneurysms and bifurcations. Some of their latest work includes a method to segment bifurcation points in MRI. Furthermore, they have both been involved with developing a simulator for rehearsing puncturing of the ventricles in the brain. Both have found the work within research both a challenging and exiting career. They hope to be able to start a Ph.D. study where they are able to investigate areas of modelling vessels and applications for models of blood vessels. If funding is possible they hope to commence this within the next year. Requests for reprints should be forwarded to :
Lasse Riis Ostergaard: lasse@hst.auc.dk |
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