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Home > News and Events > News Releases > News Releases Archive News Releases: January - March 2006ContentsFebruaryFebruary 8, 2006: NIBIB Announces Grantsmanship Seminar in North Carolina on April 18, 2006The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) invites you to attend an NIBIB regional Granstmanship Seminar on Tuesday, April 18, 2006, hosted by North Carolina State State University, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center in the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. This Granstmanship Seminar is intended to provide an overview of NIBIB funding opportunities and the NIH application, review and grant-making processes and policies. We invite faculty, researchers, students, and others interested in research opportunities in bioengineering, biomedical imaging, and research training opportunities at the National Institutes of Health to attend. Quantitative scientists who have little familiarity with NIH but are interested in biomedical applications will especially benefit from this Seminar. The one-day program will feature presentations from NIBIB science program and scientific review staff on the following topics:
Contact Stacy Wallick (wallicks@mail.nih.gov) for questions concerning the seminar program. February 24, 2006: NIBIB/CDRH Research Team Wins Award for Poster PresentationA team of NIH and CDRH researchers was awarded the Cum Laude award for the best poster presented in the conference on "Physiology, Function and Structure from Medical Images" at the February 2006 SPIE Medical Imaging Symposium. The poster, entitled "Gender-Specific Statistical Models of Pathological Coronary Arteries for Generating Simulated Angiograms," describes improved methods for diagnosis and treatment of coronary artery disease. The work was motivated by recent studies showing that gender differences in the size of coronary arteries and in the character of atherosclerotic lesions affect the detection of coronary artery disease using medical imaging. These differences also affect the safety and effectiveness of image-guided interventions. The goal of this research is to develop recommendations for gender- and case-specific imaging protocols, and gender-specific device labeling and optimization to address these issues. This work was also funded in part by the FDA Office of Women’s Health. A paper of the same title will be published in the conference proceedings next month. GENDER-SPECIFIC STATISTICAL MODELS OF PATHOLOGICAL CORONARY ARTERIES FOR GENERATING SIMULATED ANGIOGRAMS Iacovos S Kyprianou, Laura Thompson, Diem Phuc Banh, William Pritchard, John Karanian, Lee Rosen, and Kyle J Myers. NIBIB/CDRH Joint Laboratory for the Assessment of Medical Imaging Systems, US Food and Drug Administration, Rockville, MD, USA Cardiovascular disease is considered the leading cause of death in the U.S., accounting for 38 percent of all deaths. There are gender differences in the size of coronary arteries and in the character and location of atherosclerotic lesions that affect the detection of coronary artery disease with the medical imaging modalities currently used, for example angiography and computed tomography (CT). These differences also affect the safety and effectiveness of image-guided interventions using therapeutic devices. For the optimization of the medical imaging modalities used for this specific task we require the generation of clinically-realistic, gender-specific images of healthy and pathological coronary angiograms. For this purpose we have created a gender-specific statistical model of a pathological coronary artery tree. Starting from “healthy” heart-phantoms created from high resolution CT scans of cadaver hearts of both genders, the model uses prevalence data obtained from clinical studies of patients with significant (>50% stenosis) coronary artery disease (CAD). The model determines the plaque deposit locations and character (length, percent stenosis) for each case, based on a flow model. These data are then used to generate artificially diseased artery trees, embedded in a gender-specific torso model. Using an x-ray and optical photon Monte-Carlo simulation program, we then generate simulated angiograms exhibiting realistic disease patterns. The severity of each angiogram is determined from a set of rules that combines the geometrically increasing severity of lesions, the cumulative effects of multiple obstructions, the significance of their locations, the modifying influence of the collaterals, and the size and quality of the distal vessels. The simulated angiograms will consequently be read by model and human observers. The probability of detection derived in combination with the severity score will be used as a figure of merit for the patient- and gender-specific optimization of the imaging modality under investigation.MarchMarch 8, 2006: Macromolecular Drug Carriers Weigh-In to Target TumorsA new study sheds light on how the size of a polymeric drug carrier can affect its success in delivering cancer drugs to solid tumors. The findings may lead to new ways of targeting tumors with anti-cancer drugs. The study was partly funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. Click here for more information. (Adobe PDF 42K) |
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