Volumetric photoacoustic imaging of kidney

Clinical problem description

The main application of this project is kidney evaluation before transplantation[1]. Only functioning and free of injuries kidney are suitable for transplantation. First, the kidney will be inspected for presence of injuries like necrosis or fibrosis. Second, the functioning of the kidney will be evaluated by measuring blood perfusion through the kidney’s cortex. The example of the blood perfusion is shown in Fig.1.

Technical problem description

We are using the pre-clinical Vevo LAZR-X photoacoustic system (Fujifilm Visual Sonics, Toronto, Canada). It comprises a laser source in a combination with high-frequency US probe. The probe is mounted in a translational stage facilitating 3D acquisition which volume is much smaller than the volume of the kidney. An example of the 3D sub-volume is shown in Fig. 2.

Your task would be to develop a method for full volumetric reconstruction of the kidney based on small acquired sub-volumes.

[1] Hysi, Eno et al. “Photoacoustic imaging of kidney fibrosis for assessing pretransplant organ quality.” JCI insight vol. 5,10 e136995. 21 May. 2020, doi:10.1172/jci.insight.136995

Assignment

You will

-          Get experience in PA and US imaging

o   Principles of PA imaging

o   Basics of B-mode US

o   PA spectroscopy

-          Solve a clinically relevant problem

This project is in collaboration with Gijs van Soest from Erasmus MC

Requirements

Requirements

-          Confident user of Matlab or Python

-          Understanding of medical imaging

-          Being ready to read, write and code =)

Contact

Last modified: 2022-04-22