General Description: The University of Lincoln is seeking to appoint a new PhD student to join the recently established Laboratory of Vision Engineering (LoVE), at School of Computer Science. The centre is internationally recognised for its research in capture, transmission, processing and understanding of (medical) images, video and other high-dimensional data, and currently comprises 8 faculty staff. The successful candidate will be offered a studentship as part of a European collaborative project, involving seven academic institutes and two industrial partners across four European countries.

The School of Computer Science at the University of Lincoln scored highly in the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2008) with 85% of its outputs ranked at international quality or better with 15% ranked world-leading. The School provides a stimulating environment for academic research, and is based on the picturesque waterfront campus in the vibrant city of Lincoln in high quality, newly developed facilities. 

Project Description: The project aims to develop novel approaches to provide a solution that offers access, collection, sharing and intelligent analysis of long term and consistent personal health status data through an integrated digital representation in silico environment, which will help to deliver clinical analysis, prediction, prevention and treatment tailored to the individual subject. The project is expected to exert a major influence on the reshaping of future healthcare in the handling of increased life expectancy and the ageing population.

This PhD studentship is focussed in the area of multi-scale medical image analysis to detect and measure abnormal growths (e.g. tumours), which will subsequently support clinically meaningful analysis, e.g. follow-up studies to evaluate the tumour response to therapy.  Primary tasks include developing novel image analysis algorithms and approaches, including (but not limited to) robust segmentation, 3D reconstruction, image registration and feature extraction to support accurate analysis and reliable detection of a range of cancer diseases through the information available at different scales. It is expected that the availability of such information will help solve many uncertain cases caused by the ambiguity of data that is often seen at a single scale. For example, the analysis of histology images will provide significant measures to reach more trustworthy decisions for the detection of abnormal structures from the images at the organ level. 

Academic Criteria: The successful candidate should possess a good honours degree in Computer Science, Engineering or related discipline. Applicants with a relevant Masters are particularly welcome. Experience in relevant areas including (but not limited to); (medical) image analysis, optimisation, image registration, and machine learning, would be an advantage. Evidence of ability to engage in scientific research and to work collaboratively as part of a team, including excellent communication skills in both written and spoken English, is required. 

Funding: The studentship will cover tuition fees and a stipend based on the Research Council UK (RCUK) stipend levels for up to three years, as well as opportunities for travel and participation in international conferences and project meetings. The studentship offers the opportunity to engage in international collaboration within an ambitious team, and to benefit from excellent support to produce and disseminate original research contributions.


How to Apply: Interested candidates are invited to send a Curriculum Vitae to Dr Xujiong Ye ([log in to unmask]) with the subject line “Application for PhD Position in Multi-scale medical image analysis”

Informal enquiries about the post can also be made to Dr Xujiong Ye (email: [log in to unmask]) and/or Prof Nigel Allinson (email: [log in to unmask]).

Closing date: 20th February 2013