Prof Sebastien Ourselin
UCL Professor of Medical Image Computing
Principle Investigator GIFT-Surg
Sebastien Ourselin is currently Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Medical Imaging, Head of the Translational Imaging Group (TIG) as part of the Centre for Medical Image Computing (CMIC), and Professor of Medical Image Computing at UCL. His core skills are in medical image analysis, software engineering, and translational medicine. He is best known for his work on image registration and segmentation, its exploitation for robust image-based biomarkers in neurological conditions, as well as for his development of image-guided surgery systems. His research is often collaborative, involving clinical and commercial partners.
Sebastien is leading the translational imaging research program between CMIC and the UCL Institute of Neurology, and has established in collaboration with Prof Nick Fox a new imaging unit at Queen Square to deliver engineering solutions for clinical trials. In collaboration with Prof John Duncan, he is also leading the development of an image-guided neurosurgery platform, which has already been deployed within the interventional MRI environment at Queen Square for temporal lobe epilepsy. This work built the foundation to expand the work into neurosurgical planning, currently funded under the Wellcome Trust and Department of Health HICF scheme. He is also leading the development of the open-source NifTK platform. Most of these activities are underpinning GIFT-Surg’s technological foundations.
GIFT-Surg focus
As Principle Investigator, Sebastien Ourselin has overall responsibility of the project delivery. GIFT-Surg is a complex multi-disciplinary project where not a single scientist would have the full expertise on every clinical or technical area. For that matter, he is fully supported by the co-investigators but also has a dedicated project manager (Jenny Nery) to provide appropriate daily support. Sebastien is also Chair of the Project Executive and Project Management Board creating an appropriate structure to focus this large initiative.
In addition, he is specifically involved in the research efforts under surgical planning and intra-operative data fusion.
Surgical planning consists of accurate and detailed anatomical and functional documentation of the fetal organs of interest, fetal position and localisation of the placenta to assist with optimal port placement and subsequent insertion of probes or instruments. Preoperative computation will also support intra-operative biomechanical model changes and direct optimal imaging planes for real-time modalities that may be used to update preoperative anatomical structures. Existing software platforms at CMIC will be used to support the segmentation, registration and processing of fetal MRI and US images used during the planning phase.
Intra-operative data fusion will provide real-time feedback during therapy based on a combination of direct vision via the fetoscope combined with novel intrauterine imaging devices and external ultrasound, fused with preoperative models. To fuse preoperative information to the intraoperative anatomy, biomechanical models, models, statistical shape models and motion modelling will be used to deform 3D structural anatomical models to the information acquired in vivo.