I am the director of the Vision and Image Processing (VIP) Laboratory at Duke University. At VIP lab, our long-term goal is to improve the vision outcomes of at-risk patients with ocular diseases through earlier and better-directed therapy. To achieve this goal, we take advantage of recent advances in image processing and optics as an integrated technology to capture ocular images with higher resolution and better motion stability compared to the state-of-the-art imaging systems. Once these high-quality images are capture, we provide objective tools to quantitatively measure novel imaging biomarkers of the onset and progression of ophthalmic diseases.

1.      Image Analysis Software Development for Ophthalmology and Vision Sciences:

A major focus of our lab is development of fully automated software to objectively detect and evaluate the biomarkers for onset and progression of ocular diseases in adults (e.g. diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration (AMD), or Glaucoma) and children (e.g. retinopathy or prematurity (ROP)). In this line of work, we collaborate with our clinical colleagues, especially Duke Advanced Reasearch in SDOCT Imaging Laboratory. We also develop automatic segmentation algorithms to detect/segment/quantify ocular anatomical/pathological structures seen on ophthalmic imaging systems such as Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT).

2.      Image Processing Theory and Application:

We study efficient signal processing based methods to overcome the theoretical and practical limitations that constrain the achievable resolution of any imaging device. Our approach, which is based on adaptive extraction and robust fusion of relevant information from the expensive and sophisticated as well as simple and cheap sensors, has found wide applications in improving the quality of imaging systems such as ophthalmic SD-OCT, video indirect ophthalmoscopy, digital X-ray mammography, electronic and optical microscopes, and commercial digital camcorders. When we are not busy developing a mathematical model of the procrastination theory, we play with some statistical signal processing ideas, mainly super-resolution, demosaicing/deblurring/denoising, motion estimation, compressive sensing/adaptive sampling, and sensor fusion.

3.    Advanced Ophthalmic Imaging Hardware Development:

In collaboration with our colleagues at the department of biomedical engineering, especially the Laboratory for Biophotonics, we develop the next generation ophthalmic imaging systems, including advanced handheld SDOCT and adaptive optics ocular imaging systems.

News

Feb. 2012: Rolando Estrada has put complete study software (MATLAB Code) and dataset including our automated and manual markings for his BOE paper Exploratory Dijkstraforest based automatic vessel segmentation: applications in video indirect ophthalmoscopy (VIO)", freely available online.
January 2012: Yeay! We got NIH funding to build the next generation of hanheld SD-OCT systems.
January 2012: Stephanie Chiu has put the  complete study dataset including our automated and manual markings for her Jan. 2012 IOVS"Validated Automatic Segmentation of AMD Pathology including Drusen and Geographic Atrophy in SDOCT Images" online.
June 2011: PhD Student Stephanie Chiu received First prize for outstanding research at the annual Duke Ophthalmology Trainee day Scientific Symposium.
Feb. 2011: PhD Student Stephanie Chiu received the National Eye Institute travel award for her ARVO abstract.
Feb. 2011: 2010 IEEE Signal Processing Society -Best Paper Award  (Kernal Regression for Image Processing and Reconstruction, in IEEE Transactions on Image Processing). 
Nov. 2010: PhD Student Stephanie Chiu received $80,000 Chambers Fellowship
Oct. 2010: PhD Student Stephanie Chiu  received 3rd prize for best posterAnnual Meeting of the Fitzpatric k Institute for Photonics
June 2010: PhD Student Stephanie Chiu received First prize for outstanding research at the annual Duke Ophthalmology Trainee day Scientific Symposium.
Apr. 2010: PhD Student Rolando Estrada  received AFER/Retina Research Foundation Student Travel Award for his ARVO abstract.

AVAILABLE POSITIONS

A: Postdoctoral Research Associate: We currently have multi-year funding for postdocs. The minimum requirement is two first-authored high-quality image-processing journal publications (e.g. papers in IEEE TIP, IEEE PAMI, and Biomedical Optics Express) in the past three years. UPDATE Position Filled, you may send me your CV in case future positions are openned.

 

B: BME Graduate Students (Fall-2013 admission):

  US residents: Students with a minimum 3.5 GPA from a distinguished US university (or with one first-authored peer-reveiwed publication in high-impact journal) may send me an email with their detailed CV (PDF format) to be considered for full-financial aide admission.

International Students: I do not provide financial aid for "International" students, unless they are the top students of their countries' top university or have first-authored peer-reveiwed publications in high-impact journals.

C: Duke's 3rd Year Medical Students: Medical students interested in participating in ophthalmic imaging related projects may contact me directly. Please call or send me an email.  

D: Undergraduate/Graduate Student: Current Duke students (BME, EE, CE, or CS) interested in image processing/ophthalmology related projects can contact me directly via email or drop by my office.

OUR LAB IS FUNDED BY: