The 14th of June, Cardiofunxion organizes a session in the context of the 4th VPH Summer School to address the topic of multidisciplanarity in biomedical research. Large amounts of resources are spent across distinct research groups, often working towards the same objective. Different disciplines have distinct approaches towards research. How to make efforts converge, while learning to be an autonomous researcher?

This session will promote a discussion between summer school participants and speakers focusing on the challenges of being an early stage researcher in multidisciplinary contexts. The participants will have the opportunity to discuss the scientific challenges they encountered throughout their research path.

Hasta la vista!

The CardioFunXion project organized the Winter School of 2018 in Lyon on the INSA campus hosted by CREATIS. A summary of the winter school program can be found here. A total of 8 talks of a length of 1h30min were given during the winter school. It was very well organized and each day covered a topic. The first day the talks were oriented in validation methods in cardiac ultrasound, the second day talks were about in-silico approaches, the third day about animal experiments and the last day about in vitro approaches.

Moreover, the students had the possibility to assist to 3 different hands-on related to the talks of the winter school. There was a phantom about cardiac ultrasound to understand the technicalities of the ultrasound techniques as well as to simulate different probes depending on the type of wave used to emit ultrasound (planar wave, divergence wave or focus wave). This hands on included as well the creation of synthetic images as explained in the first talk of the winter school. Another hands on was about the use of machine learning for classification of a population between diseased or non-diseased. The third hands-on was about phantom images using different probes. It was related to the first hands-on and one could think it as its practical session. In fact, the students had the possibility to play with three different phantoms (two of creatis and one of Caen's hospital). Once the winter school finished we uploaded the videos taken during the talks (YouTube playlist).

A total of 30 participants came to the winter school and joined the different hands-on sessions.

CardioFunXion participated and prepared two activities to teach engineering applications in cardiology: influence of scar tissue in the electrical activation of the cardiac muscle in a synthetic ventricle and analysis of athlete remodelling using cMRI. Both activities were related to the research projects of the PhD students, and showed the problems they aim to solve and the challenges they face in a hands-on interactive way.

CFX was present in the 2018 edition of the Myocardial Velocity & Deformation Imaging annual symposium hosted by KU Leuven, where the main advances involving cardiac ultrasound imaging research take the spotlight, with a special focus on motion and deformation analysis.

Academy, industry (GE Healthcare, Siemens, Philips, Canon, Sandoz and Daiichi-Sankyo) and clinics were very well represented in this event. 

The two days were divided in themed sessions composed of several talks each. These year's themes were: 

• Big Data  

• High Frame Rate Imaging 

• Mechanics of the Dyssynchronous LV 

• LA Function Assessment - Why and How?  

• The Loaded RV  

• The Loaded LV 

• LV Structure and Function  

• Strain Standardization  

• Heart Failure and Diastolic Function 

CFX ESR Èric Lluch gave a talk on 'Micro structural and fibre remodelling in congenital heart disease - Synchrotron imaging of fetal hearts', within the aim of the  LV Structure and Function session.

 

High quality discussions after each talk were fomented by session moderators.

 

As usual, this intensive event was extremely useful to get an overview of the main research advances regarding cardiac ultrasound imaging. Many thanks to the research groups of Cardiology & Cardiovascular Imaging and Dynamics of the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences of KU Leuven, for another high quality symposium.

The CardioFunXion project is pleased to announce the organization of its second winter school dedicated to cardiac ultrasound. This winter school will focus on the development of validation methods in cardiac ultrasound, covering recent advances in in-silico, in vitro and in vivo approaches. All invited speakers (morning classes) will present in depth their topic and will have time for interacting with the audience through constructive discussions. Please have a look at our youtube channel for watching talks at previous editions and judge by yourself of the quality of the presentations and discussions.

The winter school will be hosted by CREATIS this year and will take place in Lyon on the INSA campus.

!! Updates !!

• PLEASE FILL IN THE FEEDBACK FORM 
• YouTube playlist of morning sessions
• Welcome slides (with useful links: download it on your phone!)
• We have 30 registered participants (1/30). Inscriptions are now closed.
• Please bookmark this map of the campus to find your way and get a list of nearby hotels & restaurants 
• Short link to this page: http://bit.ly/wscfx18
• Registration is now opened (11/08)

Presentation

The complete agenda is given below. Both lectures and practical sessions are proposed.

In terms of lectures, the first day focuses on recent advances in modeling strategies to generate highly realistic cardiac images, both from heart mechanics and imaging perspectives. As synthetic images are often the first level of image processing algorithms, augmenting their realism is expected to have a high impact to improve the relevance of any evaluation based on such data.

The next day adresses key aspects of in vitro validation. The design of heart phantoms is a complicated topic to offer realistic conditions of acquisitions (and image quality) and reflect meaningful patterns in the shape and dynamics of a ventricle. Besides phantom that help quantifying accuracy in controlled conditions, in vitro experiments can also provide insights regarding the structure of the heart tissue. As a novel modality for high resolution imaging of tissue, we will illustrate how Synchrotron based X-ray phase-contrast tomography can bring unique images enhancing structural information of the cardiac tissue and the perspectives it offers to understand at a myofibre resolution how certain pathologies affect cardiac tissue.

The third day of this winter school will describe methods for animal-based validation. We will illustrate two essential uses of animal models: for the validation of image and signal processing methods that quantify disease, by offering a controlled model of the location and the extent of a pathology, and for the understanding of pathophysiology mechanisms in the cardiovascular system.

Finally, our last day will integrate lessons learned from the spectrum of in-silico, in vitro and in vivo approaches from the standpoint of clinical challenges, when it comes to verify the applicability of a software or the reliability of a clinical hypothesis within the context of a clinical study.

We also proposed three practical workshops that will run on the first 3 afternoons of the workshop.

These hands-on sessions offer a unique training opportunity to get your hands dirty while discussing with invited speakers of practical aspects that could not be discussed at morning sessions. By default we will assign you to a new hands-on session everyday but you can specify your prefences in the registration form. 

Detailed agenda

Registration

REGISTRATION TO ATTEND CLASSES AND HANDS-ON SESSIONS IS FREE BUT MANDATORY TO GET ACCESS TO THE WINTER SCHOOL VENUE. NO REGISTRATION WILL BE POSSIBLE THE DAY OF THE EVENT!

Registration is closed. now open! Please fill in this form to be enrolled.

We will limit the participation to 50 people so make sure you do take your registration as a strong commitment. Would you have to cancel for any unforeseen reason, please unregister by email to make sure we allow all interested people to participate. Registration will be opened until the 19TH OF JANUARY 2018.

You can also leave us your contact details here and we will make sure to keep you informed of all updates about the winter school.

A social event will be organized during the winter school for a moderate cost. Details will be communicated in due time.

Lunches have to be paid for by each participant. A list of restaurants nearby the INSA campus will be communicated to the participants. The map above already gives a few suggestions. 

Acknowledgements

This meeting is endorsed by the LABEX PRIMES network. A network of more than 190 researchers and research teachers having complementary skills and located in Lyon and in the surrounding Rhône-Alpes-Auvergne region.

This event is made possible thanks to the financial support provided by the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 642676 (Cardiofunxion).