Problems in Biologic Imaging: Opportunities for Signal Processing

Prof. Jelena Kovacevic
Carnegie Mellon University

Abstract:
In recent years, the focus in biological sciences has shifted from understanding single parts of larger systems, sort of vertical approach, to understanding complex systems at the cellular and molecular levels, horizontal approach. Thus the revolution of "omics" projects, genomics and now proteomics. Understanding complexity of biological systems is a task that requires acquisition, analysis and sharing of huge databases, and in particular, high-dimensional databases. Processing such huge amount of bioimages visually by biologists is inefficient, time-consuming and error-prone. Therefore, we would like to move towards automated, efficient and robust processing of such bioimage data sets. Moreover, some information hidden in the images may not be readily visually available. Thus, we do not only help humans by using sophisticated algorithms for faster and more efficient processing but also because new knowledge is generated through use of such algorithms. The ultimate dream is to have distributed yet integrated large bioimage databases which would allow researchers to upload their data, have it processed, share the data, download data as well as platform-optimized code, etc, and all this in a common format. To achieve this goal, we must draw upon a whole host of sophisticated tools from signal processing, machine learning and scientific computing. I will address some of these issues in this presentation, especially those where signal processing expertise can play a significant role.

Bio:
JELENA KOVACEVIC received a Ph.D. degree from Columbia University. She then joined Bell Labs, followed by Carnegie Mellon University in 2003, where she is currently the Edward David Schramm Professor and Head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and the Director of the Center for Bioimage Informatics. She received the Belgrade October Prize and the E.I. Jury Award at Columbia University. She is a coauthor on an SP Society award-winning paper and is a coauthor of the books "Wavelets and Subband Coding” and "Foundations of Signal Processing". Dr. Kovacevic is the Fellow of the IEEE and EURASIP and was the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing. She was a keynote speaker at several meetings and has been involved in organizing numerous conferences. Her research interests include multiresolution techniques and biomedical applications.