CRCNS: Fighting Blindness
Despite great advances in neuroscience and medical technology in recent decades, nearly ten million Americans still suffer blindness due to retinal degenerative diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa (RP), age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy, and glaucoma. Unfortunately, current treatments available for these conditions are still quite limited. A primary challenge to developing effective treatments is the need for a complete understanding of the highly complex and delicate systems that compose the retina and how those systems change in response to degenerative disorders.Remodeling processes that occur in the neuronal pathways within the retina during the course of retinal deterioration are of particular importance to the development of treatments for these conditions. Researchers at the Robert E. Marc Laboratory at the Moran Eye Center are collaborating with the SCI Institute on a project supported by the NIH-NIBIB (grant number 5R01EB005832) to develop high-throughput techniques for reconstructing and visualizing the neural structures that compose the retina in order to meet these challenges.
Scientific Background
Remembering Gene Golub - Salt Lake City, Utah
Those attending the event in Salt Lake City were:
Nelson Beebe, Department of Mathematics, University of Utah
Adam Bargteil - Carnegie Mellon University
Martin Berzins, School of Computing and SCI Institute, University of Utah
Mary Anne Berzins, Human Resources, University of Utah
Elaine Cohen, School of Computing, University of Utah
Kate Coles, Department of English, University of Utah
Steve Corbato, Office of Information Technology, University of Utah
Chuck Hansen, School of Computing and SCI Institute, University of Utah
Chris Johnson, School of Computing and SCI Institute, University of Utah
Greg Jones, SCI Institute
Tom Lyche, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo
Rich Riesenfeld, School of Computing, University of Utah
Kris Sikorski, School of Computing, University of Utah
Claudio Silva, School of Computing and SCI Institute, University of Utah
Barry Weller (Gene's Cousin), Department of English, University of Utah
Autism Research Profiled in Salt Lake Magazine
The February 2008 Issue of Salt Lake magazine includes a profile of groundbreaking research being conducted at the University of Utah on the problem of Autism. Advancements in brain image analysis techniques developed by SCI researchers Guido Gerig, Ross Whitaker and P. Thomas Fletcher are specifically mentioned. (print version only)
Guido Gerig Joins Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute
Guido Gerig joins the University of Utah's Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute as a USTAR faculty member. The Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute has established itself as an international research leader in the areas of scientific computing, scientific visualization, and image processing. USTAR is an innovative, aggressive and far-reaching effort to bolster Utah's economy with high-paying jobs and keep the state vibrant in the Knowledge Age. The USTAR Support Coalition and the Salt Lake Chamber sought public and private investment to recruit world-class research teams in carefully targeted disciplines. These teams will develop products and services that can be commercialized in new businesses and industries.
Neuro Image Analysis Team Joins SCI Institute
 (L-R) Dr. Guido Gerig, Dr. Marcel Prastawa, Casey Goodlett, Sylvain Gouttard |
Developing the Next Generation Tools for Preoperative Planning for Implantable Cardiac Defibrillators
 BioPSE visualizing the electrical field generated by an ICD device. |
The use of ICDs has greatly increased over the last few years due to their efficacy in preventing sudden cardiac death (SCD) in patients with congenital heart defects or heart disease. These devices work by continually monitoring the rhythm of the patient's heart and immediately delivering a corrective electric shock if a life-threatening tachycardia is detected. Through this innovation, thousands of lives are saved each year. Surprisingly, these devices are sometimes implanted in newborns and older children with congenital heart defects. Pediatric patients present a particular challenge to the surgeons planning an implantation due to the wide variety of shapes and sizes of torsos. It often has proven difficult for physicians to determine the ideal placement and orientation of the electrodes prior to surgery. Accurate placement of the electrodes is crucial to ensure successful defibrillation with a minimum amount of electric current and to minimize potential damage to the heart and the surrounding tissues.
Building a Better Brain Atlas
 In 1909 the Broadman areas map was published which localized various functions of cortex. |
Although we've identified many structures and characteristics that are common in all human brains, in reality every brain is different and we need to improve our understanding of how brains vary between individuals. One problem that persists is that most current atlases have been based on arbitrarily chosen individuals. Even today, when intense research has been directed toward the development of digital three-dimensional atlases of the brain, most digital brain atlases so far have been based on a single subject's anatomy. This introduces a bias into the analysis when comparing individual brains to the atlas and does not provide a meaningful baseline with which to measure individual anatomical variation.
SCI to Collaborate on Three New SciDAC Centers
The SCI Institute is pleased to announce that it will be participating in three DOE SciDAC 2 research centers.The Visualization and Analytics Center for Enabling Technologies (VACET), includes SCI Institute faculty Chris Johnson (Center Co- PI with Wes Bethel from LBNL), Chuck Hansen, Steve Parker, Claudio Silva, Allen Sanderson and Xavier Tricoche. The center will focus on leveraging scientific visualization and analytics technology to increase scientific productivity and insight. It will be challenged with resolving one of the primary bottlenecks in contemporary science, making the massive amounts of data now available to scientists accessible and understandable. Advances in computational technology have resulted in an "information Big Bang," vastly increasing the amount of scientific data available, but also creating a significant challenge to reveal the structures, relationships, and anomalies hidden within the data. The VACET Center will respond to that challenge by adapting, extending, creating when necessary, and deploying visualization and data understanding technologies for the scientific community.
SCI Grad Student Helps Solve Open Problem in Computational Geometry
SCI graduate student Jason F. Shepherd and coauthor Carlos D. Carbonera have published a solution to Problem #27 of The Open Problems Project's list of unresolved problems in computational geometry. The question is:
Can the interior of every simply connected polyhedron whose surface is meshed by an even number of quadrilaterals be partitioned into a hexahedral mesh compatible with the surface meshing?The solution of Carbonera and Shepherd settles the practical aspects of the problem by demonstrating an explicit algorithm that extends a quadrilateral surface mesh to a hexahedral mesh where all the hexahedra have straight segment edges. This work did leave one aspect of the problem open. The authors did not resolve the question of achieving a hexahedral mesh with all planar faces. The collaborators are now working on a revision that should close this problem definitively.
C. D. Carbonera, J.F. Shepherd, "A Constructive Approach to Constrained Hexahedral Mesh Generation," Proceedings, 15th International Meshing Roundtable, Birmingham, AL, September 2006.
Dr. Sarang Joshi joins SCI Institute
Dr. Sarang Joshi has joined SCI as an Associate Professor of the Department of Bio Engineering. Before coming to Utah, Dr. Joshi was an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Prior to joining Chapel Hill, Dr. Joshi was Director of Technology Development at IntellX, a Medical Imaging start-up company which was later acquired by Medtronic. Sarang's research interests are in the emerging field of Computational Anatomy and have recently focused on its application to Radiation Oncology. Most recently he spent a year on sabbatical at DKFZ (German Cancer Research Center) in Heidelberg, Germany, as a visiting scientist in the Department of Medical Physics where he focused on developing four dimensional radiation therapy approaches for improved treatment of Prostate and Lung Cancer.Dr. Joshi received his D.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis. His research interests include Image Understanding, Computer Vision and Shape Analysis. He holds numerous patents in the area of image registration and has over 50 scholarly publications.