IBME Bellhouse BioEngenuity Event

Each BioEngenuity event comprises a keynote presentation, research presentations by IBME faculty and a poster session to showcase the work of post-doctoral researchers and doctoral students. This year's event was held at the Richard Doll Building, Headington, Oxford.

Dr Abhirup Banerjee BSc MStat PhD, Royal Society University Research Fellow and Full Member of Faculty at the IBME (pictured above speaking at the event), presented on multimodal digital approaches for cardiac imaging that have the power to transform the delivery of cardiac interventions. Vascular, structural, electrical and mechanical cardiac imaging approaches currently used by clinicians and their limitations were discussed. Dr Banerjee showcased a new imaging modality that combines traditional imaging approaches to provide clinicians with more accurate insights delivered in near-real time using computational models. These “multimodal digital heart” representations make it possible to model blood flow before and after blood clots and enable more detailed insights using temporal vessel segmentation in myocardial infarctions.

Professor Tingting Zhu BEng DPhil (Oxon) MSc, Associate Professor in AI for Digital Health at the IBME, delivered a presentation, titled “AI in Health Analytics: The Journey Towards Patient-Centric Digital Twins”. Her presentation highlighted how multimodal and multivariate health data can be used to model disease progression and treatment response over time. Prof. Zhu’s generative multi-modal model uses mixed patient health data combined with data imputation to create personalised predictive modelling. The novel generative multi-modal models enable more accurate treatment recommendations for clinical practice.

Professor Seb Ourselin FREng FMedSci, Head of the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences at King’s College London and Director of the AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare at the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering, delivered the keynote address on the topic of Engineering Better Health.

Professor Ourselin highlighted a portfolio of recent research projects, from digital health to surgery and intervention, and how their technology has moved from bench-to-bedside-to-boardroom. Strategic co-location of hospitals, research laboratories and industry has enabled the creation of the flagship institute for biomedical research, the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering. Prof. Ourselin shared strategies for increasing the likelihood of successful translation of medical technology. He provided concrete impactful examples from his work that have increased patient satisfaction and addressed the challenges of long waiting times for imaging currently faced by NHS hospitals.

“The event was exceptionally effective at presenting complex scientific information in an easy-to-understand way. It is a privilege to be a part of a network at the IBME, where researchers are connected to experts in biomedical engineering and can follow up with questions.”

DPhil student Erik Vanegas Müller

Professor Constantin Coussios OBE FREng FMedSci, Director, Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Statutory Chair of Biomedical Engineering reflected, “It was inspirational to hear about Professor Ourselin’s creative take on the medical technology innovation ecosystem being built around the London Institute of Healthcare. The many commonalities and common challenges with the IBME will enable us to explore multiple collaborations around our joint interests in image-guided surgery, medical image analysis, AI for digital health and the rapid translation of therapeutic technologies into first-in-human clinical trials in collaboration with industry. I am very grateful to Professor Ourselin, our internal speakers Prof. Tingting Zhou and Dr Abhirup Banerjee and the entire IBME administrative team for helping make this Autumn BioEngenuity event such a success, and look forward to the next event in the spring.”