Advanced X-ray Tomographic Imaging

Medical physics and biomedical engineering research at the Advanced X-ray Tomographic Imaging (AXTI, homophone of actie, meaning action in Dutch) lab focuses on novel image acquisition, processing and analysis techniques, physical and perceptual evaluation of image quality, radiation dosimetry, tomographic image reconstruction, and advanced computational simulation methods in diagnostic x-ray based imaging, especially for breast and body tomographic imaging.

The aim of the AXTI lab is to perform state-of-the-art, clinically relevant research by working side by side with clinicians from the Department of Medical Imaging at Radboudumc and collaborating with commercial partners, medical physicists, and scientists from around the world.

Thanks to the group members covering a wide range of skills and expertise, the research performed by AXTI spans all stages of the medical imaging chain, from the physics of image generation to the development of Artificial Intelligence algorithms for image quality improvement and radiomics-based tumor characterization. Some of the projects that AXTI is involved in include characterization and optimization of advanced tomographic breast imaging methods for cancer detection, diagnosis, and therapy response monitoring improvement. In addition, novel radiation dose metrics for personalized dosimetry in breast imaging are being developed, and research is also being performed on optimizing and characterizing the technical and clinical performance of functional lung and cardiac CT.

AXTI is part of the “Women’s Cancers” research theme of the Radboud Institute for Health Sciences (RIHS). Our research is funded primarily by the National Institutes of Health of the USA, the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), and the European Research Council (ERC). The lab also works in close collaboration with industry (Siemens Healthineers, Canon Medical Systems and Screenpoint Medical) and with the Dutch Expert Centre for Screening (LRCB).

News

November 1, 2022: Leonardo Coito Pereyra started working as a postdoctoral researcher at the AXTI group, focusing on functional tomosynthesis imaging for the improvement of breast cancer detection and treatment.
October 15, 2022: Gustavo Pacheco Guevara started working as a PhD student at the AXTI group, focusing on the development and validation of novel breast tomosynthesis acquisition methods for functional breast imaging.
May 9, 2022: The AXTI group has two new vacancies to offer. One PhD project on the 'Development of functional breast tomosynthesis' (more information), and one PostDoc position on the 'Development of X-ray-based functional breast imaging systems' ((more information).
April 7, 2022: We are excited to share that the Radboudumc hospital has now installed the first dedicated breast CT system optimized for 4-dimensional breast imaging in the world! With this system, our AXTI group will develop dedicated breast dynamic CT perfusion imaging with very high temporal and spatial resolutions. This imaging method will allow us to make major breakthroughs in breast cancer care, especially for personalized treatment. The installation of this hardware is a big step forward in our European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator grant BREAST4D. In this project, we will combine this hardware with our newly-developed image reconstruction, correction, processing, and analysis algorithms, resulting in 4D movies of the tumor perfusion process. We would like to thank the Koning Corporation engineering team for their hard work, working with us in developing this new system to our requirements and dismantling the old breast CT and assembling the new one in only 3 days!
March 10, 2022: The NVIDIA Academic Hardware Grant program has awarded our PhD student Marta Pinto with a NVIDIA RTX A6000 48GB GPU for her project "Deep Learning scatter correction approach for Contrast Enhanced Mammography". This NVIDIA Hardware will support the AXTI project in conducting experiments faster and thus help to significantly accelerate our research.
March 1, 2022: Andrea Motta joined the AXTI group for his MSc thesis about Deep Learning algorithms for breast density quantification from digital mammography, working with Marco Caballo and Sjoerd Tunissen.
March 1, 2022: Ioannis Sechopoulos receives a Vici grant for research on improving breast cancer diagnostics using tomosynthesis. Improvement of the technique should lead to less unnecessary follow-up examinations during population screening, and clearer analysis of tumours before and after treatment.
March 1, 2022: Francesco Di Salvo joined the AXTI group for his MSc thesis about Deep Learning algorithms for breast cancer diagnosis in contrast-enhanced breast CT, working with Marco Caballo and Sarah Verboom.
February 16, 2022: The AXTI group has another interesting Internship/MSc project to offer on 'Optical 3D measurements in breast tomosynthesis'. Find out more and how to apply.
February 16, 2022: Olga Sliwicka won the public prize at the Mercator Launch Innovation Competition 2022 for her Skip Beat Innovation. Skip Beat is an improved scanning protocol applied to dynamic myocardial CT perfusion resulting in possible radiation dose reduction by at least 50%. During an online voting, this innovation was rated highest by the public audience.
February 14, 2022: We have a new vacant MSc project on 'Radiomics and Machine Learning to predict response to treatment in pancreatic cancer' at the AXTI group. More information and how to apply ...
January 1, 2022: Lian Pennings started working at the Medical Imaging department as a research coordinator for the groups BIG and AXTI.
October 6, 2021: Congratulations to Wendelien Sanderink, who successfully defendet her PhD thesis named "Detection and Minimally Invasive Treatment of Small Breast Cancers".
August 30, 2021: The PhD thesis of Marco Caballo was covered with an article in the Autumn 2021 newsletter of the European Federation of Organisations For Medical Physics (EFOMP). The article can be found in the EMP News Autumn 2021, at this link.
July 1, 2021: Daan van den Oever started working as a postdoctoral researcher at the AXTI group, focusing on traditional and AI algorithms for image formation.
February 24, 2021: Marco Caballo has successfully defended his PhD thesis, with the title 'Towards Precision Medicine in Breast Cancer Imaging: From 3D Breast CT Radiomics to 4D Perfusion'.
January 22, 2021: The work by Marco Caballo, Christian Fedon and Ioannis Sechopoulos about breast density quantification in mammography and tomosynthesis based on breast CT data, published in Medical Physics, was covered in AuntMinnie Europe.
September 1, 2020: Sarah Verboom started working as a PhD student at the AXTI group, focusing on the development of artificial-intelligence models for mammogram interpretation.
September 1, 2020: Noelia Solis Preciado started working as an external PhD student at the AXTI group, focusing on evaluating the accuracy and sensitivity of breast density measurement from mammographic images.
August 1, 2020: Jessie Gommers started working as a PhD student at the AXTI group, focusing on optimizing mammography interpretation for breast cancer screening.
July 1, 2020: Franziska Mauter started working as an external PhD student at the AXTI group, focusing on the assessment of image quality in mammography using deep learning methods.
June 2, 2020: Mikhail Mikerov started working as a PhD student at the AXTI group, focusing on image reconstruction and motion correction in 4D breast CT imaging.
June 2, 2020: Juan José Pautasso started working as a PhD student at the AXTI group, focusing on image simulation and analysis in 4D breast CT imaging.
February 17, 2020: Sjoerd Tunissen started working as a PhD student at the AXTI group, focusing on image processing of 4D perfusion CT images.
January 6, 2020: Marco Caballo was selected and invited at the 10th Siemens Breast Care Day, held at the European Congress of Radiology 2020 (Vienna, Austria), to give the talk “Radiomics for Automated Breast Cancer Diagnosis: The Truce between Machine Learning and Deep Learning”
December 16, 2019: Dagmar Grob has succesfully defended her PhD thesis with the title ' Functional CT Imaging of the Lung: Subtraction CT as a novel technique'
December 12, 2019: Ioannis Sechopoulos was awarded with an ERC consolidator grant for the project BREAST4D – '4D Breast Imaging for personalized breast cancer treatment'.
December 12, 2019: Christiana Balta has succesfully defended her PhD thesis with the title 'Objective image quality assessment in X-ray breast imaging' .
November 22, 2019: Ioannis Sechopoulos was awarded with the grant application called aiREAD " – Accurate and Intelligent Reading for EArlier breast cancer Detection”
May 1, 2019: Olga Sliwicka started working as a PhD student at the AXTI group, focusing on cardiac perfusion imaging in acute chest pain.
March 26, 2019: Alejandro Rodriguez-Ruiz has succesfully defended his PhD thesis titled "Artificial intelligence & tomosynthesis for breast cancer detection".
March 18, 2019: Domenico Pangallo joined the AXTI group for his MSc thesis about quantitative image analysis of breast cancer in dedicated breast CT imaging, under the supervision of Marco Caballo.
March 10, 2019: Twan Cuijpers joined the AXTI group for his MSc internship. He will work with Joana Boita in a project from LRCB (Dutch Expert Centre for Screening) that intends to create a visualization tool for teaching in mammography.
January 24, 2019: Ioannis Sechopoulos was named Fellow of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine ( AAPM) due to his distinguished contributions to medical physics and the esteem in which he is held by his peers
December 5, 2018: The work by Marco Caballo and Ioannis Sechopoulos about using machine learning to generate super-resolution digital breast phantoms for accurate simulations of new imaging systems, published in Physics in Medicine and Biology, was covered in Physics World and in Aunt Minnie
November 23, 2018: Dagmar Grob was awarded for the best 4-slide short talk at the PhD retreat of Radboud Institute for Health Sciences (22 - 23 November 2018)
November 5, 2018: Marta Pinto started working as a PhD student at the AXTI group, focusing on image processing algorithms for image quality improvement in digital breast tomosynthesis.
September 3, 2018: Michelle Foko joined the AXTI group for her BSc internship. She is involved in the work of Christian Fedon in optimization of a software for simulation of breast compression using 3D surface scan camera.
September 3, 2018: Valentin Koch joined the AXTI group for his MSc internship. He will work with Marco Caballo in the project "Image analysis of high-resolution CT cochlea images"
August 10, 2018: Christian Fedon has been awarded a travel grant to start a research collaboration with The Catholic University of South Korea. The topic is "Characterization of the breast in the Asian population for dosimetric modeling"
March 1, 2018: Dagmar Grob was awarded for the Best Paper Presentation in the chest session of the “MyThesis in 3 Minutes” at the ECR 2018. Presentation was about the quantitative comparison of dual-energy CT and subtraction CT in pulmonary embolism-induced perfusion defects on iodine maps.
December 12, 2017: The work by Alejandro Rodriguez-Ruiz and Ioannis Sechopoulos on the comparison of radiologists and artificial intelligence for detecting breast cancer in mammography, which was presented at the RSNA 2017, was covered in Aunt Minnie .
September 13, 2017: Marco Caballo got the first place in the poster competition organized at the Summer school "Advanced methods in biomedical image analysis" (Brno, Czech Republic) with his work entitled "An automatic segmentation algorithm for tissue classification of dedicated breast CT images".
April 4, 2017: At the European Congress of Radiology 2017, Vienna, Alejandro Rodríguez-Ruiz was awarded the Best Scientific Paper Presentation award within the topic Breast for his talk "One-view Digital Breast Tomosynthesis: Do we need more?"
March 6, 2017: Marco Caballo started working as a PhD student at the AXTI group, focusing on novel image computing algorithms for breast CT images.
December 23, 2016: Koen Michielsen started working as a post-doctoral researcher at the AXTI group, focusing on 3D reconstruction of breast CT and digital breast tomosynthesis.
December 9, 2016: Dr. James G. Nagy is visiting the Radboudumc and will give a special lecture in December 9th entitled: 'Object Motion and Image Reconstruction'.
November 29, 2016: Christian Fedon started working as a post-doctoral researcher at the AXTI group, with the aim to develop a new personalized and global breast dosimetry model.
November 22, 2016: The AXTI group has a new vacancy for a PhD student to expand the impact of tomographic imaging in breast cancer: analysis and new applications of 3D surface and dedicated CT images of the breast. Please apply before December 12th. More information...
October 19, 2016: Joana Boita joined the AXTI group as a PhD student to work on developing, optimizing and validating a VGA test of mammographic image quality to predict clinical performance.
October 4, 2016: Dr. Michael McNitt-Gray is visiting the Radboudumc and will give a special lecture in October 4th entitled: ‘Quantitative Imaging and Radiomics in CT: The Effects of Acquisition and Reconstruction Parameters’
July 1, 2016: Gerrita van Spijker and Marjolein Bastiaans have started working in the AXTI group as scientific and administrative staff, respectively.
July 1, 2016: During the first half of 2016, AXTI was present at several international conferences and courses held in Vienna, Leuven, Varna, Malmö and Washington DC. Find out more...
May 23, 2016: The AXTI group has a new vacancy for a PhD student to work on the image quality improvement and performance assessment of dedicated breast CT. Please apply before June 3rd. More information...