Erik Meijering, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Bioimage Analysis, Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Title of Keynote Lecture: Cellular and Molecular Image Analysis

A main challenge of biomedical research in the postgenomic era is the unraveling of the cellular and molecular mechanisms of life. Thorough understanding of the biological processes occurring at these scales is of fundamental importance for the discovery of biomarkers for early diagnosis and for the development of effective drugs and therapies. In the past two decades, revolutionary advances in molecular probing and microscopic imaging technologies have had an enormous impact on the field, and progress in biology has come to rely heavily on these technologies. It has become clear that in order to get the full picture of any living thing, it is necessary to study not only its spatial (morphological or anatomical) properties, but also its temporal (dynamic or functional) behavior. This requires time-lapse imaging, and indeed it is nowadays commonplace to image biological phenomena in three dimensions over time, at multiple wavelengths. The rapidly increasing size (currently in the gigabyte range), dimensionality (3D, 4D, 5D), and complexity (high-content) of the resulting image data poses new challenges for automated data management and analysis. One of the topics for which interest has increased exponentially over the years is object tracking. In order to detect, segment, track, and quantify hundreds to thousands of cells or particles in many hundreds to thousands of image frames, sophisticated computerized methods are very much needed. The goal of this presentation is to survey and discuss the latest trends in the development and application of such methods.

Biography:

Erik Meijering received a MSc degree (cum laude) in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology (in 1996), and a PhD degree in Medical Image Analysis from Utrecht University (in 2000), both in the Netherlands. From 2000-2002, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Biomedical Imaging Group of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. In 2002, he returned to the Netherlands to join the new Biomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam of the Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam, where he is currently an Associate Professor of Bioimage Analysis. His research interests are in the areas of computer vision, image processing, and image analysis, with applications in cellular and molecular imaging. He published more than 60 scientific articles in this area. He is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), its Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), and Signal Processing Society (SPS). He was Technical Program Chair for the IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI) in 2006 and 2010. He was/is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (since 2004), the International Journal on Biomedical Imaging (term 2006-2009), and the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (term 2008-2011), and was a Guest Editor for the September 2005 Special Issue of the latter journal, which focused on Molecular and Cellular Bioimaging. He also served/serves in a great variety of scientific conference, advisory, and review boards.