The Robotics Institute

Although an MD/PhD, I am primarily an engineer, with extensive background in electronics and computer science, the development of new technology and prototype design. My current research focuses on two main areas. The first involves developing a new method of image guided intervention based on in-situ image guidance. One example of this approach is a device called the Sonic Flashlight, which provides a stable virtual image of an ultrasound scan within the patient in real time. Over the past 8 years of continuous NIH funding, my laboratory has developed and tested the device in patients for the placement of Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter (PICC) lines into the upper arm. Extensions of this technology to remote and magnified image guided intervention have also been developed, as well as a version based on a holographic optical element that is currently funded by NIH/NIBIB. Yet another version uses Real Time 3D ultrasound, an imaging modality that I helped to develop at Duke University in the 1990’s. Our most recent effort over the past two years has been to extend in-situ imaging into the domain of microsurgery using Optical Coherence Tomography, which is the topic of the current proposal.

My second research area is in image analysis techniques for automated identification and measurement of anatomical structure and motion. Recent applications include cardiac structures, the major veins of the neck and the vasculature of the lung. Image analysis was the area of my Ph.D. dissertation with Stephen Pizer at UNC, Chapel Hill. I was a founding member of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) software consortium creating the Insight Toolkit (ITK), an open-source software library for medical image analysis.

In addition to these two main areas, I am exploring a new prosthetic device for the blind called fingersight, and am involved in electronic musical instrument design and other projects in the context of teaching undergraduates in Bioengineering. My earlier experiences in engineering include writing the software for the first computer system onboard Deep Submersible Alvin at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and designing a telemetric egg to study incubation of endangered birds at the Bronx Zoo.

VIA Lab website.

Selected publications.