BME Lecture Series: Jerry L. Prince, Johns Hopkins University

Abstract: Image synthesis methods take acquired images and produce images with contrasts, modalities, resolutions or noise levels that were not imaged. While not yet trusted for clinical use, these methods are proving invaluable in medical image analysis. For example, missing or corrupted MR tissue contrasts can be synthesized for use in an existing pipeline; CT images can be synthesized for attenuation correction in PET-MR scanners; high-resolution images can be synthesized from low-resolution data; and MR image intensities can be normalized when scanners are upgraded or replaced and for multicenter trials. In fact, image synthesis is proving to be a pragmatic solution to the problem of quantitative MRI and for the quest for reliable imaging biomarkers in precision medicine. Different image synthesis approaches will be described in this talk, starting with historically important methods and ending with the most modern approaches that are under development today. Different applications will be described to illustrate the great current utility and potential future uses for image synthesis methods. 

Biography: Jerry L. Prince received a bachelor's degree from the University of Connecticut in 1979 and a master's, electrical engineering and doctoral degrees in 1982, 1986 and 1988, respectively, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, all in electrical engineering and computer science. He worked at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, MIT Lincoln Laboratories and The Analytic Sciences Corporation (TASC). He joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University in 1989, where he is currently William B. Kouwenhoven Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and holds joint appointments in the departments of radiology, biomedical engineering, computer science, and applied mathematics and statistics. Prince is a fellow of the IEEE, the MICCAI Society, and the AIMBE, and he is a member of Sigma Xi. He also holds memberships in Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu and Phi Kappa Phi honor societies. He was an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Image Processing from 1992-1995, an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging from 2000-2004 and is currently a member of the Editorial Board of Medical Image Analysis. Prince received a 1993 National Science Foundation Presidential Faculty Fellows Award, was Maryland's 1997 Outstanding Young Engineer and was awarded the MICCAI Society Enduring Impact Award in 2012. He is also co-founder of Sonavex, Inc. His current research interests are in image processing and computer vision with primary application to medical imaging; he has published over 400 articles on these subjects.