Image sciences institute

Medical imaging, image analysis, imaging physics

Research aim

Our aim is to develop and evaluate medical image analysis and acquisition methods that help to answer research questions relevant to the strategic research programs, and that will benefit clinical imaging and image-guided interventions.

About us

The field of medical imaging is evolving rapidly since diagnosis and treatment are increasingly supported by imaging procedures. It is a strongly multi-disciplinary field, combining elements from physics, mathematics, computer science, engineering, biology, and medicine, and an important area of application for data science and artificial intelligence. At the Image Sciences Institute, we perform both fundamental and applied research in medical image acquisition and analysis. Our team of principal investigators consists of computer scientists, physicists, and engineers, who together have a wide expertise in image acquisition physics, image analysis, and translational imaging. We collaborate with clinical and technical researchers from within our hospital, as well as with researchers from many other institutions on the national and international levels. We also collaborate with industrial partners, and work on valorization of scientific results. This has, for example, led to a start-up company (MRI Guidance), a software platform for diffusion MRI analyses (ExploreDTI), and VQuest, a digital tool for testing and examination with volumetric images, used in educational programs by several (inter-)national partners. In addition, we participate in and manage the MSc and PhD programs in Medical Imaging of the Utrecht Graduate School of Life Sciences, in which we offer courses in the field of medical imaging, many of which are also open to external participants.