Dear all,

I am a new phD student in EE. I am trying to identify a key field related to
signal processing which can have some scientific prospect that can allow
some great scientific discovery, since I want to do academia later. I hope
it is not too engineering. At the same time, I also want to be able to
secure a decent job and earn a decent living. I have backgrounds in signal
processing, image/video processing, networking, communications, VLSI, etc.
After much thinking, I guess medical imaging is more or less related to
science and may some scientific discovery can be made? I am wondering if it
can be a good field for me? Any thoughts are welcome! thank you very much!

-Lucy

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 00:37:27 -0700, "gino" <mizh...@yahoo.com> wrote
in comp.dsp:

The biggest new thing in medical imaging today is multi-modality image
fusion.  This is where images of the same patient from two different
types of imaging equipment are fused together.

Originally these images were taken on two different pieces of
equipment at two different times, and the fused images were less than
optimum.  The latest trend is cameras with two different types of
imaging technology in them, where the patient is placed on the table
and scanned by both technologies in succession without being moved.

The first application, beginning a few years ago, was PET/CT
combinations.  The latest thing, just being introduced at medical
trade shows and shipping early next year, is SPECT/CT scanners.

A relative high resolution technology like CT or MRI can show
anatomical detail clearly, but often times they will not show a tumor
or lesion because it has the same density to X-Rays as the surrounding
healthy tissue.

Nuclear imaging (PET or SPECT) works by injecting the patient with a
radiopharmecutical, that is some drug that has been tagged with an
isotope that emits gamma rays or positrons.  With the right choice of
radioactive isotope and carrier compound, this results in what is
called functional or molecular imaging.  The diseased tissue shows up
clearly in an image reconstructed from gamma rays emitted by
radioactive decay of the isotope because it absorbs either much more
or much less of the carrier compound than the surrounding normal
tissue.  The downside is that the resolution of this type of imaging
is low compared to CT, so from this image alone it can be difficult to
pinpoint the exact location of the lesion.

Taking both a CT and nuclear image of the same patient and fusing them
allows the lesion to be precisely located within the higher resolution
anatomical image.  This provides for better radiotherapy and surgery.

While the fusion of CT and nuclear (PET or SPECT) images is well
along, and the major medical imaging manufacturers like Philips,
Siemens, and GE all have products, I have heard of radiologists,
radiotherapists, and surgeons wish for more.

In particular they talk about fusing MRI and ultrasound with other
modalities.  You might investigate if there are any potential projects
in this area that are relatively untouched so far.

--
Jack Klein
Home: http://JK-Technology.Com
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I must suggest you are being a little naive.  Great
scientific discoveries seldom have anything to do with
success in academia.  Success as an academic means
publications, and the most efficient way to generate
these is by having a team of graduate students to
plagiarize from.  To get the team of graduate students
you need grants (money), and it is the ability to
obtain grants which distinguishes the successful
academic from the less successful.

Me, twisted and bitter?  Never.

--
Regards,
Martin Leese
E-mail: ple...@see.Web.for.e-mail.INVALID
Web: http://members.tripod.com/martin_leese/

No, of course not. I think you gave a very cool, calm and collected
description of academia today. A few months ago I got involved in an
exchange of emails with a few people who have very distinguished
scientific carreers. Some 100-150 published articles each, one had
recieved a reward for distinguished researchers under age 35, one had
become member of the National Academy of Engineering (in USA).

I pointed out that their main thesis did not check with elementary maths
as I learned when I was 12. I got a furious response, but based solely
on that the papers I attacked was published in 1992 and had been cited
70 times since then, that the authors were "reckognized superstars of
[this particular field of research]" and the already mentioned distinctions.
After I challenged these "distinguished researchers" to actually verify
their thesis themselves (i.e. do all the job themselves and not rely on
grad students or tech assistants to do the hands-on work) and evaluate
the results according to proper scientific procedure (involving blind
tests, comparing results to pure guesswork), I never heard from them
again.

Rune

Not everyone is like that. Sometime around 1950 (when I graduated from
high school), there was an article in Scientific American about the
muscular efficiency of butterflies, which are known to fly long
distances over water. The author measured the average weights of
butterflies before and after the journey, thereby measuring the "fuel"
used, and calculated the energy cost. He measured the moment of inertia
of the wings and the energy needed for one cycle assuming no expenditure
for lift or drag. He measured the unusually high (he thought) stiffness
of the thorax to which the wings were rigidly attached, and the muscle
energy needed to flex it away from equilibrium. (It seemed to him an
unlikely coincidence that these numbers were nearly equal, and repeated
his measurements to verify them.) He tethered butterflies to a wire and
measured their wing's frequency. He then added the flexure and inertial
energy of each stroke, multiplied by the frequency, and called the
result power. He had described the most efficient engine imaginable. It
bugged me. I knew a little calculus, and I played with the numbers.

I wrote to the author privately. (Scientific American forwarded my
sealed envelope to him.) I pointed out that the wings were, by
calculation on his numbers, operating in resonance, so that the nearly
equal energies he had added ought to have been subtracted instead.

He asked me to hold off a letter to the editor for a month or two
until after his dissertation and defense: this was his thesis paper and
none of his advisors had caught the error. In the end, I never wrote,
but a year later, he sent me a copy of a letter he had written debunking
his own paper as cited by another author. For all I know, he's still
being cited, but he's rather not be.

Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

That's due to either a one-of-a-kind scientist or ages long past. Or both.
With the distinct exception of the academics who frequent comp.dsp (which
is not merely a benevolent manner of speaking, but due to the fact that
posting at comp.dsp requires a sincere interest in, and eventually results
in a more than basic knowledge of DSP), I see no correlation between academic
degree and knowledge or proficiency in a subject.

Last winter I was asked to attend a meeting as an bysitter/aide to a
potential customer for a radar-based measuring device. The vendor of this
system was a professor with a long and apparently distinguished record
of publishing. This guy had also been involved for a couple of decades
with the most prestiguous research labs of radar and high-frequency
EM propagation.

The device had been tested for some time in a geometrically and material-
wise very complex situation, and in an environment of very strong EM fields,
though due to 50 Hz power.

When I was approached the first time, the customers said that they
had got some apparently not utterly useles results after the professor
had "calibrated the EM index of refraction in air to a value of 1.4."
Of course, all alarm bells in my mind went off, and I consulted my
high-school(!) physics text to find that the index of refraction in
air was on the order of 1.0003. Me pointing this discrepancy out to the
customer was probably the reason why I was invited to the meeting.

Before this meeting I made some very quick sketches of the geometry where
this device was to be used. I made a few very coarse MPEG-movies based
on wave simulation software. Very basic stuff: Huygens' principle of wave
fronts emanating from a source of finite aperture, reflections of pulses
from a plane surface, diffraction of pulses off corners.

So when I showed the simulation this ducted geometry with lots of corners
inside, the wavefield becme a mess, completely as expected. There were
ducted waves, there were internal reflections, there were diffractions,
the resonances sustained for 20 times the duration of the source pulse.
No wonder this system never worked properly.

When asked to comment on my simulations, the professor merely commented that
I had used software intended for acoustics, not EM as were the waves that
propagated. When he saw my reference to a high-school text, he literally
exploded with rage and proclaimed that his methods were far too advanced
to be understood in terms of high-school physics. When asked to comment
on his "calibration" of the index of recfraction, he stated that this
would be due to the strong background EM fields in the area. He was never
able to produce an academic reference or a comprehensable argument (he was,
in fact, not able to produce any argument) why the 50 Hz bacground field
would interact with the several GHz waves his device used.

I could go on and on and on. It is very sad, but the last few years I have
come to view academics with very strong suspicion, with regard to their
knowledge and proficiency within their fields. True, I have this PhD
diploma myself, but my Post.Doc position ends at the end of the year,
and after that I don't know why I would need the diploma. I'll have to
think of what to do with it.

Rune

   ...

Don't use it for Kleenex. (That's the first step in not letting it go to
your head.) Like the odd fasteners you have in a jar somewhere, it may
come in handy some day; another tool in your kit.

Some of the blowhards you meet have always gotten by on bluff and
bluster; they are to be despised.

Others started well, but lost it. With no friends to holler "Bullshit!",
they drift into delusion. Often colleagues and circumstance conspire to
reinforce the delusion. At some point, they are to be pitied.

I saw what I hope was Hermann Baumann's last public performance. The
great horn player, two years my junior and certainly the best (to my
taste) since Dennis Brain, came to town. He toured the state with the
New Jersey Symphony and gave a series of master classes at Rutgers, the
State University. I know someone who drove 300 miles to hear him play.

The concert was a disaster. It was clear after the first movement that
one of the orchestra members should have taken over for him, but he
continued doggedly. Seeing the great man's art in tatters devastated me.
I wept, not alone. It was so bad that the reviewers were kind. Instead
of the truth -- he's lost it -- they wrote that he seemed to be losing
it. He must have known how bad he was. If he didn't, he's to be pitied
all the more.

Late in her life, Lotte Lenya was interviewed by a pleasant ditsy
chatterbox on a local classical music radio station. At one point, the
interviewer said, "It must be tragic to know that you can't sing any
more." Wise Lotte answered, "Oh no, my dear. It would be tragic if I did
not!" Just maybe, when you come up against one of those blowhards, you
are witness to such a tragedy.

Jerry
__________________________________________
http://www.dispeker.com/page/baumann.html
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

As a fellow horn player, this story struck a note with me!  :-)  Thanks for
sharing.  I agree with your assessment of both Baumann and Brain.  I have a
recording of Baumann playing a Weber horn concerto that is just amazing.  I used
to listen to over and over as a kid in wonder.

It is a shame that Brain passed on before his talent fully developed and before
the high quality classical recording quality that we take for granted today was
common-place.  But his recordings of the Mozart horn concertos are the best out
there in my opinion, even though the recording quality is vastly inferior to
what can be produced today.

My best in-person horn experience was with Dale Clevenger, principle of the
Chicago Symphony.  For several years he has taught and played at a music camp up
here in the NW, and I attended as a high schooler.  He had a great performance
of the Strauss first concerto.

One would like to think so... in one or two instances, this may very well
be the case. Still, the pattern is too consistent to ignore.

Rune