I am an Assistant Professor in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the UCL Department of Computer Science and also part of the Surgical Robot Vision (SRV) Group at Wellcome/EPSRC Centre for Interventional and Surgical Science (WEISS), Centre for Artificial Intelligence and UCL Robotics Institute at University College London (UCL). My research interests focus on developing computer vision and AI techniques for context awareness, machine consciousness and navigation in minimally invasive and robot-assisted surgery. Particularly, I am interested in context understanding in endoscopic procedures, surgical workflow analysis, field-of-view expansion, 3D reconstruction, perception and navigation for surgical robotics.
I am the Principal Investigator on the EPSRC grant titled ‘AI-enabled Decision support in Pituitary Surgery (2023-2025)’. During my previous roles at UCL, I was one of the leading researchers on the ‘Wellcome/EPSRC Guided Instrumentation for Fetal Therapy and Surgery (GIFT-Surg)’ project (2014 - 2022) and named researcher on the ‘EPSRC Context-Aware Augmented Reality for Endonasal Surgery project (2022 - 2025)’. Before joining UCL in 2018, I worked as a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant at University of Dundee. I obtained my PhD in Interactive and Cognitive Environments in 2016, under the Erasmus Mundus Fellowship (EMJD-ICE), jointly from Queen Mary University of London (UK) and Technical University of Catalonia (Spain). I completed the MSc in Computer Vision and Robotics (VIBOT) in 2011, under the highly competitive Erasmus Mundus Scholarship programme, jointly from Heriot-Watt University (UK), University of Girona (Spain), and University of Burgundy (France). As part of my MSc project, I contributed to the ‘ERC Soft Tissue Intervention Neurosurgical Guide (STING) at Imperial College London (UK)’.
I have authored over 60 peer-reviewed publications and received several awards, including MICCAI-IJCARS best paper award, IPCAI Audience Choice award and awards from several biomedical imaging challenges. Additionally, I am an active member of the MICCAI society and co-organiser of the Endoscopic Vision Challenges at MICCAI since 2020.
Recent trends in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and surgical science have revolutionized the field of surgery, paving the way for a new era of AI-assisted robotic interventions. These cutting-edge technologies offer tremendous potential to enhance imaging, surgical navigation, and robotic interventions, ultimately reducing cognitive load on surgeons and optimizing procedural efficiency. This talk will highlight AI applications in different surgical procedures and where we stand in terms of their clinical translation for moving towards next generation of surgical intervention.
The number of elderly and very elderly people is increasing worldwide, and so is the number of patients suffering from osteoporosis. This disease significantly impairs the quality of life and leads to high social costs. Nevertheless, the origin and course of osteoporosis are still not sufficiently understood. This is because methods for an in-depth analysis of the fine bone structure over time in living individuals are not yet available, especially those that also allow large matrix studies with statistical significance. An interdisciplinary research project now wants to change this.
The 4-D+ nanoSCOPE project is developing a groundbreaking X-ray microscope (image acquisition with submicron resolution over a hundred times faster than is currently possible). An interdisciplinary team intend to enable X-ray microscopy studies in living creatures for the very first time. They plan to do so by combining state-of-the-art imaging techniques with innovative precision learning software and a novel Xray microscope. Their method has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of bone structure and improve bone remodelling, by enabling an effective assessment of the effects on bone of age, hormones, inflammation and treatment.