Abstract:

This talk is an overview of the VAMPIRE (Vessel Assessment and Measurement Platform for Images of the REtina) project, an international and interdisciplinary research initiative created and led by the Universities of Dundee and Edinburgh in Scotland, UK, since the early 2000s. VAMPIRE research focuses on the eye as a source of biomarkers for systemic diseases (e.g. cardiovascular, diabetes, dementia) and cognitive decline, as well as on eye-specific diseases. VAMPIRE is highly interdisciplinary, bringing together medical image analysis, machine learning and data analysis, medical research, and data governance and management at scale. The talk introduces concisely the aims, structure and current results of VAMPIRE, the current vision for effective translation to society, and the several non-technical factors complementing technical research needed to achieve effective translation.

Speaker Bio:

Emanuele (Manuel) Trucco, MSc, PhD, FRSA, FIAPR, is the NRP Chair of Computational Vision in Computing, School of Science and Engineering, at the University of Dundee, and an Honorary Clinical Researcher of NHS Tayside. He has been active since 1984 in computer vision, and since 2002 in medical image analysis, publishing more than 270 refereed papers and 2 textbooks, and serving on the organizing or program committee of major international and UK conferences. Manuel is co-director of VAMPIRE (Vessel Assessment and Measurement Platform for Images of the Retina), an international research initiative led by the Universities of Dundee and Edinburgh (co-director Dr Tom MacGillivray), and part of the UK Biobank Eye andVision Consortium. VAMPIRE develops software tools for efficient data and image analysis with a focus on multi-modal retinal images. VAMPIRE has been used in UK and international biomarker studies on cardiovascular risk, stroke, dementia, diabetes and complications, cognitive performance, neurodegenerative diseases, and genetics.