MIR-Based Center Will Advance AI-Driven Imaging Technologies
Mark Anastasio, PhD, will lead the Center for Computational and AI-Enabled Imaging Sciences.
A new center at WashU Medicine Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology (MIR) aims to advance precision medicine using AI-based imaging tools. The Center for Computational and AI-Enabled Imaging Sciences, which brings together collaborators from WashU Medicine and the McKelvey School of Engineering, will focus its efforts on:
- Improving the diagnosis and guiding precision treatment of cancers, cardiovascular disease, neurological diseases and numerous other conditions.
- Advancing AI-driven imaging technologies, such as two recently developed at WashU Medicine in collaboration with MIR — one analyzes mammograms to predict five-year breast cancer risk and one rapidly maps the brain to help neurosurgeons plan surgeries — that are being commercialized.
- Developing AI-based medical imaging applications that integrate information from different imaging types — ranging from digital microscope images of cells to MRI scans to X-rays — to identify connections between them, possibly including previously unknown early indicators of disease onset that could inform more effective clinical interventions.
- Serving as an expertise hub for image analysis, using sophisticated computing tools to find patterns in datasets of millions of medical images and de-identified patient records — ultimately providing insight on both the progression and the potential treatment of disease.
- Supporting training on these tools for clinicians and researchers.
The new center will be led by Mark Anastasio, PhD, a leading expert in computational imaging science and AI for imaging applications. He joins WashU as the Mallinckrodt Endowed Professor of Imaging Sciences for MIR, where he will also serve as vice chair for imaging sciences and AI research as well as director of the Computational Imaging Research Center. Since 2019, Anastasio has served as head of the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“Institutions with leading academic medical centers that unite medical data, clinical expertise, and advanced AI research will lead the next revolution in health care,” said Anastasio in a news release. “WashU is exactly such an institution and an ideal home for this center that will enable us to build a community to drive innovation that advances patient care in ways few other institutions can achieve.”
The center will bring together experts from across the Medical Campus, including Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and WashU Medicine, and from the school’s Departments of Medicine, of Neurology, of Psychiatry and of Radiation Oncology. In addition to fueling this collaboration, the center will also house information from the imaging databases of all the participating departments.
“Part of the center’s mission is to foster foundational research in computational imaging and AI across disciplines, including those beyond medicine, building a broad community across the campus that creates new synergies.”
Anastasio will also be a professor of electrical & systems engineering for McKelvey Engineering and the associate chief research information officer for biomedical imaging at the Institute for Informatics, Data Science & Biostatistics (I2DB). In addition, he will join the leadership team of Siteman’s Oncologic Imaging Program and serve as the Siteman Cancer Center Pedal the Cause Professor.
Read more from WashU Medicine.
