- CAD-PACS Toolkit
- Minimally Invasive Spinal Surgery Electronic Patient Record
- Proton Therapy Information System
- MS CAD using GPU
CAD-PACS Toolkit
My research during the graduate studies is mainly in the area of medical imaging and imaging informatics with focus on system integration and computing technology for healthcare. During the time working toward my PhD degree, I have involved in many projects, such as CAD-PACS toolkit, minimally invasive spinal surgery electronic patient record (MISS ePR), and most importantly, my dissertation work on proton therapy information system. These accomplishments are described in the following paragraphs.
One of my early research accomplishments was the development of an integration toolkit to universal method to integrate computer-aided detection and diagnosis (CAD) results with Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) in its daily clinical environment. PACS is a mature technology in health care delivery for daily clinical imaging service and data management. CAD utilizes computer methods to obtain quantitative measurements from medical images and clinical information to assist clinicians to assess a patient’s clinical state more objectively. CAD needs image input and related information from PACS to improve its accuracy; and PACS benefits from CAD results online and available at the PACS workstation as a second reader to assist physicians in the decision making process. The method is based on Health Level 7 (HL7) and Digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) standards, and Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) workflow profiles. In addition, the integration method is Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant. The result was published on International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery (JCARS) in 2009 with title “Integration of computer-aided diagnosis/detection (CAD) results in a PACS environment using CAD–PACS toolkit and DICOM SR”.
Minimally Invasive Spinal Surgery electronic Patient Record (MISS ePR)
I am also involved in other research topics, such as the MISS ePR and 3D volumetric image processing utilizing multi-core CPU and GPU. The MISS ePR research presents the concept of bridging the gap between diagnostic images and image-assisted surgical treatment using a one-stop multimedia electronic patient record (ePR) system which manages and distributes the real-time multimodality imaging and informatics data that assists the surgeon during all clinical phases of the operation from planning Intra-Op to post-care follow-up. For this research, I was a co-author on a peer-reviewed paper titled “A multimedia electronic patient record (ePR) system for image-assisted minimally invasive spinal surgery” on JCARS published in 2010.
Proton Therapy electronic Patient Record (PT ePR)
My most recent accomplishment is the dissertation research entitled “Mining an ePR System Using a Treatment Plan Navigator for Radiation Toxicity to Evaluate Proton Therapy Treatment Protocol for Prostate Cancer”. This research aims to introduce a data mining method and a treatment plan navigator utilizing the infrastructure and data repository of a proton therapy (PT) ePR system that can ultimately help to minimize radiation toxicity in prostate cancer patients and improve better patient outcomes in future proton therapy treatment. A prototype PT ePR system compliant with Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) was developed to store prostate cancer patient images, treatment plans and related clinical data. The decision support tools and visualization tools are currently developed based on DICOM images, DICOM-RT and DICOM-RT-ION objects with collaboration with James M. Slater, M.D. Proton Treatment and Research Center, Loma Linda University Medical Center (LLUMC) and its oncologists and physicists. The data from prostate cancer patients treated with hypofractionation protocol proton therapy at LLUMC was used for evaluating the effectiveness of the ePR system. Each patient dataset includes a set of computed tomography (CT) DICOM images and four DICOM RT and RT-ION objects. In addition, clinical outcomes data collected from PT cases were included in the overall database to form a knowledge base for future outcomes analysis. The ePR system with centralized data shows promise in its ability to facilitate the proton therapy workflow. The system was evaluated with 41 patients collected for this protocol at laboratory environment in improving efficiency in data collection and integration to facilitate outcomes analysis with this system and utilizing knowledge extracted from the collected data to help clinical decision making process for a better treatment plan of prostate cancer patient treated with new hypofractionation treatment protocol. This research has been presented at many annual meetings, such as SPIE – Medical Imaging 2007-2010, American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO) 2009 and Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery (CARS) 2010.
