Tagged / IMIV

Dr Theo Akudjedu awarded the European Federation of Radiographer Societies (EFRS) Research Award

BU research, Featured, Featured academics, Research communication, Research news

Dr Theo Akudjedu

Dr Theo Akudjedu

Dr Theo Akudjedu has been awarded the European Federation of Radiographer Societies (EFRS) Research Award in recognition of his work.

Dr Akudjedu, Associate Professor in Clinical Imaging at Bournemouth University, was named the first winner of the EFRS Research Awards, which aim to recognise research achievements in the field of radiography.

His work explores radiography and healthcare research, neuroimaging and clinical neuroscience, and general clinical imaging research.

The EFRS aims to represent, promote and develop the profession of radiography in Europe, representing more than 100,000 radiographers and 8,000 radiography students across the continent.

Dr Akudjedu said: “It is really exciting and yet humbling that my research programme and activities in radiography practice and education from Bournemouth University’s Institute of Medical Imaging and Visualisation has been recognised by our European-wide professional organisation.

“This is a culmination of years of research together with numerous collaborators and students.”

BU research paper receives Radiography journal’s Editor’s Choice award

BU research, COVID-19, Featured, NHS, Research communication, Research news

A paper led by BU’s Dr Theo Akudjedu, exploring the impact of Covid-19 on radiographers, has been named as Radiography journal’s Editor’s Choice for 2021.

Each year, the journal presents an award for the Editors’ Choice paper, selected from the five issues which make up the current volume.

Headshot image of Dr Theo Akudjedu

Dr Theo Akudjedu

Dr Akudjedu, a Senior Lecturer in Medical Imaging and MRI Radiography at BU, was lead author of the winning paper – a systematic literature review examining the global impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on clinical radiography practice.

The paper was chosen from a shortlist of 12 papers which were selected for their topicality, important messages and sound research methodologies.

Dr Akudjedu brought together collaborators from across the world, as well as colleagues from the Institute of Medical Imaging and Visualisation at BU, to investigate the pressures facing radiography departments as key teams in the treatment of Covid-19 across the globe.

Published in Issue 4 of 2021, the article brings together available evidence to provide a comprehensive summary of the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on diagnostic and therapeutic radiography practice.

He said: “In the initial acute phase of the pandemic, medical imaging emerged as one of the key diagnostic tools for the management of COVID-19 patients. This altered the work pattern and load of the clinical radiography workforce. We explored the impact of the pandemic on the radiography workforce independently in regional studies including the UK.

“We employed a robust methodology to systematically review and integrate the available evidence in our research to provide a comprehensive summary of the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on diagnostic and therapeutic radiography practice to serve as a one-stop-shop to practitioners in the field.”

He added: “It is exciting for this important piece of work conducted by colleagues at the Institute of Medical Imaging & Visualisation at Bournemouth University with its global partners to be recognised. We are very grateful to our international partners and the Editors of the Radiography Journal for the recognition”

Naming the paper as their Editor’s Choice winner, J. M. Nightingale, Editor-in-Chief of Radiography journal, said: “With so many COVID-19 related articles published within radiography and radiology journals in the last two years, it has been challenging for practitioners, managers and educators to keep up to date with the latest evidence.

“This review was timely and much needed as a valuable reference resource for policy formulation and to inform developments in the radiography workforce, education and training.”

Read the full paper – The global impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on clinical radiography practice: A systematic literature review and recommendations for future services planning (available open access) 

You can also listen to Theo talking about the winning paper on the Radiography Journal Podcast

4th Annual Allied Health Professions Day 14th October 2021 – Research at BU

Awarded & submitted bids, BU research, BU2025, EU, Fusion, HSS Our 9 Research Entities, Impact, innovation, nhs, NHS, Postgraduate Research, Research news, Research Supervision, Uncategorized

 

AHPs Day 2021 - British and Irish Orthoptic Society

 

The Allied Health Professions (AHPs) are the third largest clinical workforce in the NHS and represent a total of 14 professions which are regulated by the Health Care Professions Council and the individual profession specific regulatory bodies. Research is supported nationally and regionally through the Council for Allied Health Professions Research and at BU through our partnership collaboration with the Applied Research Collaboration NIHR Wessex.

To celebrate the 4th Annual AHP day at BU we are showcasing some of the research that is being carried out by the AHP academic community in Dorset.

Dr Katie Collins – Research focuses on the hidden impairments following a stroke and how they impact on individuals participating in active life. I am involved in exploring health equity and the impacts of health inequality and supervising a Dorset Health Care University Foundation Trust (DHCFUT): BU match funded PhD studentship exploring interventions for successful contracture management.’

Dr Vikram Mohan – Current project which has QR funding is aimed at exploring the reliability and validity of the Total Faulty Breathing Scale (TFBS). In clinical practice abnormal breathing patterns are recognised, but there are no scales to quantify the severity of abnormal breathing patterns. These findings will be applied to conditions like Covid-19, COPD etc.

Peter Philips –  PhD – “What factors affect resilience in newly qualified paramedics in the UK ambulance service?” Aims to explore stressors that newly qualified paramedics face in their first year of registration, how they seek to cope with those stressors, and what effect these have. This research will have an impact on workforce planning, recruitment, and retention of staff in the NHS.

Helen Ribchester – PhD- Exploring sense making derived from the clinical practice experiences of student Occupational Therapists in India. An This is an IPA study including elements of poetic inquiry, with participants drawn from the students of an occupational therapy programme in an Indian university (SRIHER)

Sara Sayer and Prof Carol Clark –  ‘Heading for Trouble’ project, with pump prime funding, involving external stakeholders and an interdisciplinary team from the Faculty of SciTec (Prof Hamid Bouchachia, Prof Hana Burianova, Dr Ala Yankouskaya, Dr Shanti Shankar)  aiming to explore brain scans and  questions relating to attention and memory in professional footballers. Supporting health in football.

Dr Theo Akudjedu and Dr John Totman – working within the Institute for Medical Imaging and Visualisation (IMIV) a multidisciplinary collaboration of clinicians and scientists using a Siemens 3T MRI scanner for research projects to image liver, pancreatic and biliary disease and the brain.

Dr Ursula Rolfe – co-published with David Partlow a paramedic colleague from practice – Mental Health Care in Paramedic Practice The book provides paramedics with key information on a range of mental health conditions and their management. The roles of paramedics have changed in the last decade with increases in the number of 999 calls associated with the increasing mental health needs of people.

Dr Louise Fazakarley, Dr Katie Collins and Dr Caroline Ellis-Hill – supervising a funded MRes Carrie Tbaily ((DHCFUT) – Exploring caregiver perspectives of adults with severe and profound and multiple Learning disabilities accessing sedentary hydrotherapy.

Dr Louise Fazakarley – Pump prime funding to; examine the effectiveness of Physiotherapy in the early stage of Parkinson’s disease (PD): a review of the literature and Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) consultation to identify research priorities for patients with early-stage PD

Sam Page (Dorset County Hospital (DCH)), Dr Louise Fazakarley and Dr Zoe Sheppard (DCH) -ARC Wessex NIHR funding to undertake a service evaluation relating to patients who sustain pubic rami fracture and their management at home supporting better care for patients.

Dr Caroline Ellis-Hill – research focus is on humanising practice, based on existential understandings from lifeworld approaches and focuses on what make us feel human. Humanising practices are those that incorporate fully human knowing and support a sense of connection and wellbeing. Caroline has funding from the Welcome Trust – Exploring performance arts education for the stroke rehabilitation pathway, is supervising PhD students as part of the INNOVATEDIGNITY project funded by the European Commission and NIHR funding for a multicentre RCT of community-based arts and health intervention to increase psychological wellbeing in people following stroke.

Prof Carol Clark – supervising Rosie Harper (University Hospitals Dorset (UHD) with Dr Carly Stewart (BUBS) and Sally Sheppard (UHD) on a UHD; ARC Wessex NIHR; BU match funded studentship ‘Nudging: a theoretical concept for a very practical approach to pelvic floor muscle training’ Aimed at improving adherence to exercises aimed at reducing incontinence and improving health and well-being of women. Carol is currently Co-PI with Stefi Andrew (Portsmouth Hospitals University Trust) and Dr Zoe Sheppard (DCH)on NIHR ARC Wessex Exploring digital technologies for hand rehabilitation and Danni Swaithe (UHD), Dr Louise Johnson (UHD) Dr Shanti Shankar (SciTech) NIHR ARC Wessex, exploring the role of attentional focus on learning for physical recovery in acute stroke, research initiation award.

Prof Jane Murphy Co-Lead of the Aging and Dementia Research Centre  current project includes NIHR ARC Wessex funded, DONOR project (Digital cOachiNg fOr fRailty) to investigate whether a digital approach could be used alongside support from health coaches to help the lifestyle management of older people with frailty in its early stages. The DONOR project will look at whether these technologies can reduce the burden on health and care services by offering person-centred care and advice. The multidisciplinary research team will work together with stakeholders (people with frailty, carers, health coaches and AHPs) to develop and test a new digital approach, implemented across Dorset and West Hampshire. Jane provides consultancy services, works with the Wessex Academic Health Science Network and International partners and also has funding as part of the ASPIRE project with European funding.

Dr Jonathan Williams – is currently involved in projects broadly investigating clinical and sports biomechanics, including wobble board rehabilitation for diabetic neuropathy; learning and retention of infant CPR skills, quantifying spinal stiffness and movement through body worn sensors; facilitating physical activity through wearables; measurement of player load in Badminton and shoulder sensory-motor control. He is currently supervising  MRes and PhDs projects with AHPs including Andy Watt and Debora Almeida.

Debora Almeida PhD – A novel output-based approach to infant CPR training to maximise skill retention and improve patient outcome after cardiac arrest. Paediatric cardiac arrest is a worldwide health problem with high rates of morbidity and mortality. Positive outcomes depend on high quality CPR. However, infant CPR skills decay within weeks or months after training. This project aims to create a tailored retraining schedule based on the performance and retention of iCPR skills.

(more…)

The Institute of Medical Imaging and Visualisation (IMIV): getting involved with this SIA enabled initiative

BU research, BU2025, Strategic Investment Areas

The Institute of Medical Imaging & Visualisation (IMIV) has come to fruition thanks to a central University strategic investment and support from the Dorset LEP Growth Fund. A cross University team, and a series of new appointments, have worked tirelessly over the past two years to turn the concept into a reality. Having overcome the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Institute will shortly be opening its doors to progress the strategic priorities of the Institute.

Some of the first projects that will utilise the MRI scanner at the heart of the institute, stem from the internal pump priming scheme announced in late 2020 and include:

  • a project to investigate alterations in functional connectivity following therapeutic cold-water immersion (led by Professor Hana Burianova)
  • a study investigating the brain networks involved when two people work together responding to visual targets (led by Dr Xun He)
  • the investigation of a novel, cost-effective and non-invasive therapeutic intervention for individuals with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (led by Dr Rebecca Rendell) and
  • a group of lumbar spine 3-D scans to inform future grant applications for studies into intervertebral loading during spinal motion using MRI and our niche fluoroscopy technology (led by Professor Alan Breen).

Projects are also planned by Professor Carol Clark exploring the impact of sub-concussion on footballers and a pilot study on the feasibility of using abbreviated MRI for liver cancer screening for at-risk patients, led by Anmol Gangi and Dr Jamie Franklin.

Of course, the possibilities for research relating to advanced imaging are endless. As this article from the Chan Zuckerberg initiative articulates, the past, present and future of medical imaging is a truly fascinating endeavour, with endless possibilities for the future through interdisciplinary collaboration.

To forward future research, the IMIV team welcomes research collaboration ideas and colleagues across BU to access the research facilities housed by the institute. To learn more, read about IMIV on BU’s website or contact the core team directly on: IMIV@bournemouth.ac.uk

Academic Targeted Research Scheme (Data Science for Medical Imaging and Visualisation): Medical Image Analysis

BU research, Research news

My name is Adrian Galdran, and I was appointed as a Senior Lecturer in Data Science for Medical Imaging last November, in the context of BU’s Academic Targeted Research Scheme. Although I am particularly interested in medical image analysis, I have a broad interest in medical data taking any shape and nature, be it text, imaging, video, or even big tables filled with numbers!

I have been working on computer vision with medical applications for a while now. After earning my PhD in the Basque Country University (northern Spain), I headed to the beautiful Porto, where I spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at INESC-TEC. In those years I focused a lot on the automatic analysis of images of the eye fundus. These are images acquired by projecting light into the back of the eye and capturing a picture of the retina, and they are useful for the early detection of diseases like Diabetic Retinopathy or Age-Related Diabetic Maculopathy.

An image of the eye fundus – the retina

When a person suffers from this kind of diabetes, retinal vessels start to hemorrhage and leak blood into the retina, which at first starts as micro-aneurysms, but later develops into larger lesions and leads to sight-threatening situations. I find it fascinating that we can diagnose diseases like diabetes by looking into the human retina.

After my stay in Portugal, I moved for a second postdoctoral experience to Montréal, Canada, where I worked on deep learning for medical image classification and segmentation, again with a focus on retinal imaging. I spent one year in Canada, with its rough winter and a wonderful summer. It was then that I received the offer to pursue my research within BU, in the context of the new Medical Imaging and Visualisation Institute (IMIV). I am very excited to collaborate with this new institution, which houses an MRI scanner and ultrasound devices. I expect that the privilege of having access to these advanced facilities will trigger research in medical image analysis at BU, and I am hoping to be part of it.

If you are interested in collaborating in any aspect of medical image analysis, please contact me to discuss any common project we may build.