The development of breakthroughs in medical imaging

In his presentation of the recent New Year Lecture at the Royal Academy of Engineering, Keble Professorial Fellow, Sir Mike Brady, described the key importance of bringing a range of fields together in the development, and importantly to gain funding for the application, of new technology.

During the same event Sir Mike received the Academy's Whittle Medal for outstanding and sustained achievement which has contributed to the well-being of the nation.

Sir Mike, also Oxford BP Professor of Information Engineering,  has a fifth new company, Matakina, poised to dramatically improve  the quality of breast cancer screening. The new technology can model the complex physics of a mammogram image to quantify breast density, which is the key risk factor for breast cancer. But he noted that it was vital for many disciplines to become involved in such developments so that good ideas did not merely remain that, but can brought to application stage. This is particularly important in his own field. "Medical image analysis demands a fruitful relationship between engineers, clinicians, and industry so that developments can progress from the white board to the clinic and to economic success. For my work this means formulating and exploiting fundamental physics, engineering, and biology models to ensure software systems that work 99.9% of the time 24/7."

Information on Keble College's multi-disciplinary work on Imaging can be found here.