SPECIAL SESSION

Spectral Imaging (imaging spectroscopy) for Medical Diagnosis and Pharmaceutical Applications

Prof. Issa Ibraheem
Alandalus Private University for Medical Sciences, www.au.edu.sy; and Damascus University, Syria
issa.ibraheem@gmail.com

Abstract

The costs for the health systems - world wide - explode and it seems that this problem will not be solved easily in the next time. A new strategy to reduce these costs is to reduce the time to find the right diagnosis by providing the experts (physicians, surgeons, but also nurses) with additional important information about the patient that helps them to avoid other expensive and time-consuming diagnostic methods.
Spectral imaging sensors can acquire hyper-spectral images, images with an additional spectral dimension to the spatial information, providing not only the brightness (monochrome imaging = one channel) or color (RGB-imaging = 3 channels) but an entire spectrum for each pixel (10 up to 1000 bands) . This allows acquiring images containing valuable information about the molecular or atomic composition and structure of the observed materials.
Recent advances in sensor technology, calibration procedures, hyper-spectral classification and post-processing together with a large and increasing number of outstanding research projects indicate the high potential of spectral imaging as an emerging technology. Applications range from material inspection, analysis and classification tasks to medical diagnosis systems. Thus, spectral imaging opens a wide field of applications for scientists and engineers in medicine, agriculture, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, recycling, chemistry, forensic medicine and military.

Objectives

The session aims at presenting the methodology together with latest developments in the field of spectral imaging, hyper-spectral classification, advances in sensors and hardware systems, spectral imaging systems, spectral vision systems and applications.

Target Audience

All researchers, scientists and practitioners working in the field of spectral imaging for medical diagnosis and pharmaceutical application.
Authors submitting papers to this special session must follow the initial paper formatting requirements. All papers must be submitted by October 29, 2012.

Biography of the Organizer

Ibraheem is a full professor for Medical electronics and Medical measurements of the Institute for Electro- and Biomedical Engineering at Damascus University. His first degree was in electronics and communication engineering from the Tishreen University of Technology, Syria (Eng. 1988), before he has finished the diploma study in Electro- and Biomedical Engineering from the Graz University of Technology, Austria (Dipl. Ing. 1995). After then he promoted his PhD in Electro- and Biomedical Engineering from the Graz University of Technology, Austria ( Dr. techn. 2001). Professional experience includes R&D Team leader in Optical Sensors and imaging Systems in Research Institute “Carinthian Tech Research CTR-AG, Villach, Austria www.ctr.at ”, Assistant professorship at the Institute for Medical information technology at the University of Applied Sciences FH-Technikum Kaernten. Since 2010 Associate Professor and Program leader of the Section for Spectral Imaging at the Department of Biomedical
Engineering of University of Damascus . Issa Ibraheem is member of coordination Committee for Foreign cooperation at Damascus University. He has published over fifteen journal articles and more than 30 contributions to conference proceedings including invited journal articles and invited presentations at international meetings. His research interests include the development and improvement of spectral imaging and its application in medical diagnosis, in particular in the VIS and NIR hyper as well as multi spectral imaging methods, the classification and pattern recognition of tumor tissues and different skin lesions using numerical and statistical analysis of spectral data, digital image processing, spectral microscopy and spectral endoscopy for medical diagnosis and pharmaceutical applications.

Professor Issa Ibraheem obtained his PhD in Electro- and Biomedical Engineering from the Technical University Graz, TU-Graz, in Austria. He is currently a professor of Medical Electronics and Biomedical Measurment-Techniques at Damascus University and Al-Andalus privite university for medical sciences who webside is www.au.edu.sy. His research interests include graphics, Pattern recognition, artificial intelligent, Spectral imaging, Computer vision and image processing.

Submissions

Please email all submissions to issa.ibraheem@gmail.com by October 29, 2012. Authors MUST include their full contact information in the email.

Important Deadlines

Papers will be reviewed on an ongoing basis. Authors who submit early will receive their feedback and notification early.