Forthcoming Seminars
All seminars held at 12:00-1:00 in the Wolfson Research Theatre, School of Computing, unless otherwise stated.
- 12/06/2013: Dr. Ryo Kawasaki - Retinal Vascular Signs and Cardiovascular Diseases, and Beyond… -New Insights into Old Classics-
Abstract
Retina provides a unique window for us; we can literally observe microvasculature directly with simple non-invasive instruments. There is an article in 1859 already which reported a relationship between hypertension and retinal vascular signs. Since then, ophthalmologists and researchers have been linking retinal pathologies and systemic diseases, especially cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension and stroke.
In the last decade, quantitative retinal vascular measurements were introduced to investigate this link in detail and found that a subtle change in retinal vasculature may be considered as 'a surrogate marker' reflecting microcirculation in whole body. These quantitative assessments have been applied to large scale population-based epidemiological studies of both adults and children. These studies now convincingly show links between a variety of retinal microvascular signs to both clinical and subclinical systemic diseases including cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. All of these advancements were achieved in collaborative research of ophthalmologists and researchers in biomedical image analysis
This presentation will outline how traditional retinal vascular signs have been utilized in systemic cardiovascular disease assessment, and how modern retinal vascular assessments will contribute to improve systemic disease risk assessment.
BIO
Dr. Kawasaki is currently Assistant Professor of Department of Public Health, Yamagata University, Japan. He holds a concurrent commitment as a consultant ophthalmologist, specializing in diagnosis and treatment of retina and macular conditions, including diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration, retinal vein occlusion, pathologic myopia and other vitreo-retinal diseases.
Dr. Kawasaki has been involved in wide range of ophthalmic epidemiology research, including preventive medicine, standardization of clinical diagnostic schemes of retinal diseases, utilizing quantitative retinal measurements as a marker to better predict development of eye diseases and systemic diseases.
He is a Principal Investigator of multi-centre trials and population-based cohort studies supported by NHMRC and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Project grant. Dr. Kawasaki is on the Editorial Board of Ophthalmic Epidemiology.
His current passion is to establish a national screening program for diabetic retinopathy integrating clinical epidemiological evidences and quantitative retinal measurements aiming to preserve better vision, beyond preventing blindness.
Host: Professor Emanuele Trucco - 21/06/2013: Profess Dinesh Kumar - Retinal image analysis research at RMIT Melbourne
Abstract:
Retinal image analysis has attracted significant attention in the past 25 years due to the non-invasive nature and the ability to visualize the vessels. However, the current techniques make a number of assumptions such as the two dimensional nature of the vessels, time invariant nature of the vessel diameters and the scale invariance of the vessel properties induced due to differences in the lens distance. Further, features of the retinal images such as fractal properties are used without any analysis of these features related to the clinical properties.
At RMIT, the team have been exploring the relationship of cardiac cycle, vessel diameter and fractal properties, and repeatbility of these experiments with alteration in lens distance. We have developed techniques to observe the time varying diameter of the vessels, and the relationship of the vessel properties and fractal properties. We are currently developing a phantom of the eye to determine the 3 dimensional structure and the vessel diameter as a function of time. Dinesh will discuss some of their ideas and findings during the seminar.
Host: Professor Emanuele Trucco
Everyone is welcome, including the public!
You can also see some of our past seminars.
Any questions, comments or speaker suggestions? Contact Hu Xu.