This is a webinar event.
Speaker: Mahta Moghaddam, Ming Hsieh Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles
Title: Microwave Medical Imaging and Monitoring of Thermal Therapies: Accelerated Inverse Scattering via Learning
Abstract: Electromagnetic waves in the microwave regime have been proposed for a variety of medical applications in the past several decades. Microwave imaging, which can be likened to multistatic radar, was perhaps the first such application. More recently, non-contact hyperthermia and probe-based ablation methods have seen clinical use for thermal therapy purposes. A persistent challenge with such systems, however, is monitoring the temporal and spatial progress of heat deposition to achieve optimal treatment results. This talk will include an overview of our recent work on the development of microwave imaging, thermal therapy, and thermal monitoring systems, with emphasis on the latter. The main insight leading to the ability to monitor the progression of thermal treatment via microwave imaging is that the dielectric constant of biological tissue is a sensitive function of temperature. As such, by using an inverse scattering method for tissue dielectric constant, we are able to map the temperature of the 3D treatment domain. Through the use of a convolutional neural network trained with MRI images, we are also able to substantially accelerate the imaging process as well as increase the resolution of the dielectric constant (and temperature) maps beyond the state-of-the-art in conventional microwave imaging. A summary of analyses and results will be presented to show successful retrieval of temperature fields with a precision of better than 1o C and spatial resolution of sub-cm at a refresh rate of about 1 frame per second, which has the promise of making this method realistically useful in a clinical setting.
Bio: Mahta Moghaddam is the Ming Hsieh Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA. She is the Director of New Research Initiatives at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and is the co-Director of the USC Center for Sustainability Solutions. Prior to USC, she was at the University of Michigan (2003-2011) and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL, 1991-2003). She received the B.S. degree in 1986 from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas with highest distinction, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1989 and 1991, respectively, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, all in Electrical and Computer Engineering. She was a systems engineer for the Cassini Radar and served as Science Chair of the JPL Team X (Advanced Mission Studies Team). Her most recent research interests include the development of new radar instrument and measurement technologies for subsurface and subcanopy characterization from spaceborne, airborne, and drone-based vantage points especially for soil moisture and permafrost applications, geophysical retrievals using signal-of-opportunity reflectometry, and transforming concepts of radar remote sensing to medical imaging and therapy systems. Dr. Moghaddam is a member of the Soil Moisture Active and Passive (SMAP) mission Science Team and a member of the Cyclones Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) Science Team. She was the principal investigator of the AirMOSS NASA Earth Ventures 1 mission, is a Fellow of IEEE, and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
ECpE Seminar Host: Jiming Song
Webex Link: https://iastate.webex.com/iastate/j.php?MTID=m6d219aa96dc8dc1e05c85d44ef6b1ea5
Event Recording: https://iastate.webex.com/iastate/ldr.php?RCID=eb94d3b1710747d3a8a68264de6daf55