Insigneo Newsletter - February 2022

Welcome to our monthly Insigneo newsletter!  

Our monthly e-newsletter keeps you up to date with events, funding, success stories and information. We hope you will find it useful! If you would like to add information and/or events to this newsletter please email: news@insigneo.org (the newsletter will be issued during the 2nd week of the month, excluding January and August).
Please ensure that you submit news and events with a minimum of one week's notice.

Professor Damien Lacroix has been appointed as Insigneo Deputy Director

We are pleased to announce that Professor Damien Lacroix has been appointed as Insigneo Deputy Director from the Faculty of Engineering.   Damien is one of the founding members of the Insigneo Institute having joined the University in 2012 to take a Chair in Biomedical Engineering within the Institute and he has also previously served on the Insigneo board.

Professor Jim Wild, Insigneo Executive Director: “I am delighted to announce Damien’s appointment, I very much look forward to working with Damien in shaping the vision and extending the reach and impact of the institute’s research in years to come.”

Damien has extensive experience in coordinating large research programmes at the national (MultiSim EPSRC Frontier Engineering Award £4.7m) and international (ERC Starting Grant €1.5m and EU-FP7-MySpine €3m) levels. He was recently included in the top 2% most cited scientists in the world. He served as President of the European Society of Biomechanics from 2010 to 2012 and was elected to the World Council of Biomechanics in 2018.

Insigneo Showcase 2022 - save the date!

We are excited to announce the Insigneo Showcase will return for 2022 to celebrate the Institute's 10th year.  The event is planned for the Friday 8 July 2022 and will be held at The Diamond building.

The invitations will be sent out shortly so keep an eye out for the email!

We look forward to welcoming you on 8 July 2022.

Insigneo image competition

Do you have some great images from your research?  Would you like to see them on the Insigneo website? Then please apply for our 2022 Image competition!

This competition is open to all Insigneo Members and Associate Members. 

This year there will be five categories to match our new research themes and the prize includes the winning images featuring on the Insigneo website and in our newsletter and brochures. 

You are able to submit as many images as you like - please complete the form for each image. The deadline for entries is: 31 March 2022

New members

We would like to introduce some of our new members who have joined the Insigneo Institute recently:

Helen has worked on the development and application of hyperpolarised gas and proton lung MRI at the University of Sheffield since 2009.

Previously she was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto working on dynamic contrast-enhanced breast imaging.  She has a PhD in MRI Physics and a BSc in Physics from Imperial College London.

Her research interests are focused on the application of MR imaging techniques in patients with lung disease.  Projects that she has worked on include:

• early detection of lung disease in children with cystic fibrosis
• visualisation of collateral and delayed ventilation in patients with advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
• imaging of ventilation response to therapies in patients with asthma and COPD
• visualisation of ventilation and perfusion matching in patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension, asthma and COPD
• imaging ventilation and microstructural changes in young adults with congenital diaphragmatic hernia

She is involved in clinical research study design and delivery, devising MR acquisition protocols and image computing workflows, and performing data analysis and interpretation. She helped to establish and is active in maintaining the clinical hyperpolarised gas lung imaging service.

Full profile 

He is currently a Lecturer at the Automatic Control and Systems Engineering Department in the University of Sheffield, UK.

Prior to this position, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA, USA, and Carnegie Mellon University, PA, USA, from 2011 to 2015, and a Lecturer at the University of York, UK from 2016 to 2018

His current research focus is on microrobotics and its biomedical applications as ingestible robots.

Full profile 

She is currently a first year PhD student developing a Head and Neck Motion Capture System to be used during Radiotherapy, with the aim to improve the efficacy of the radiotherapy procedure whilst also improving the patient comfort. Opportunity and inspiration are plentiful when working under the supervision of Prof Sanja Dogramadzi.

Here his work is focused on the production and characterisation of Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) via bacterial fermentation and the subsequent extraction, purification and postprocessing of these sustainable biopolymers by methods such as 3D printing, dip coating and solvent casting for biomedical applications.

He is currently employed on Professor Roy’s ECOFUNCO Horizon 2020 project grant, which has a focus on upscaling the production of medium chain length and short chain length PHAs and in the near future also of bacterial cellulose (BC) aimed at potential industrial scale production. Soon he will be employed on a British council project researching into antimicrobial composites for bone tissue engineering. He was previously also employed on POLYBIOSKIN for the production of PHAs. Prior to that he joined Prof Roy’s lab on a 3D BIONET grant, for the development of 3D-printed cardiac tissue patches for tissue regeneration after myocardial infarction in collaboration with the University of Oxford and Imperial College London.

Having completed undergraduate degrees in Physics with Astrophysics and Cosmology at Lancaster University and Biochemistry and Music at Keele University David went on to study a Masters in Bionanotechnology run jointly between the University of Sheffield and Leeds University. He then joined the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering for his PhD on catalytic micromotors, under the supervision of Dr Ebbens, which he completed in 2016. During this time and his subsequent postdoc with Dr Zhao (CBE), he was key in the development of Reactive Inkjet Printing (RIJ) and enzyme powered silk microrockets, which gained considerable media interest and resulted in several high-quality publications. Furthermore, he designed, built and developed the software for two Reactive Inkjet printers.

Additionally, during his undergraduate degrees and whilst waiting for his PhD to start David spent several occasions working in the pharmaceutical industry in various departments including, Chemistry, Enzymology, and Drug formulation development at Solvay Pharmaceuticals and Abbott Products in Germany.

Full profile

I work with Professor Steven Sourbron and my research is centered in renal MRI image analysis to discover a potential non-invasive biomarker for early diagnosis of diabetic kidney disease.

In 2021, I concluded my PhD in the field of renal MR imaging at Berlin Ultrahigh Field Facility (B.U.F.F.) - Max Delbrueck Centre, Berlin, Germany. My research was focused on the development of new diagnosis techniques for renal MRI. During My PhD, I implemented a diffusion-weighted pulse sequence on a pre-clinical MRI scanner and used it to disentangle the different components responsible for the renal diffusion decay (blood, intra-tubular content and tissue diffusion) together with a continuum modelling approach.

I completed my undergraduate degree in psychology here in Sheffield in 2019 before transitioning into cognitive and computational neuroscience for my master's degree. This knowledge of computational neuroscience afforded me the opportunity to receive a position on the MRC funded DiMeN (Discovery Medicine North) DTP. My undergraduate and masters research focussed on the representation of tactile and proprioceptive inputs in the brain.

I am now using my knowledge of tactile processing to investigate how we are able to maintain balance and feel the ground during locomotion. By combining experimental and computational methods, it will be possible to discern the role of tactile feedback, providing us with information about how this feedback could be restored in patients with peripheral neuropathy or through neuroprosthetic devices for amputees.

Tom's current work involves harnessing the newest expansion microscopy innovations to better understand nanoscale biological structures in a variety of life sciences projects.

Tom completed his Ph.D. in 2021 at the University of Leeds, where he used expansion microscopy to study cardiomyocyte nanodomain remodelling in heart failure, as well as developing structures in stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes. He obtained an M.Phil. degree from the University of Manchester, where he applied electron tomography, a 3D form of conventional electron microscopy, to characterise the layout of calcium release units in avian hearts.

Full profile

Lung abnormalities found in Long Covid patients with breathlessness

Researchers have identified abnormalities in the lungs of Long Covid patients who are experiencing breathlessness using a cutting-edge method of imaging that was developed by Professor Jim Wild, Guilhem Collier, Laura Saunders, Roger Thompson and the Polaris research group.

The EXPLAIN study, which involves teams at Sheffield, Oxford, Cardiff and Manchester, is using hyperpolarised xenon MRI scans to investigate possible lung damage in Long Covid patients who have not been hospitalised with COVID-19 but who continue to experience breathlessness. 

The study, which received government funding in 2021, is supported by the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (BRC). The findings were published on the medRxiv pre-print server.

Sheffield one of first recipients of Turing Network Development Awards

Congratulations to Insigneo's Research Director for Healthcare Data/AI, Dr Haiping Lu from the Department of Computer Science, who is one of the first recipients of a new award launched by The Alan Turing Institute.

The University of Sheffied is among 24 UK universities to receive the first-ever Turing Network Development Award which will support the University’s data science and AI research and build on the world-leading expertise at Sheffield to contribute to a national programme that sets the UK apart as a leader in the field.

New MRC Experimental Medicine grant

Congratulations to Insigneo members Dr Alex Rothman, David Kiely, Andy Swift and Paul Morris, and Jen Middleton, Pankaj Garg, Iain Armstrong working with the national PH clinical trials network and external collaborators who have been awarded an MRC Experimental Medicine grant of £2.2m (MRC £1.7m + £0.5m external) for 'MICA: Pulmonary Hypertension: intensification and personalisation of combination Rx (PHoenix)'.

This will fund a 2x2 crossover of combination therapy in patients with implanted devices to be undertaken through the UK National Pulmonary Hypertension Clinical Trials Network in collaboration with Abbott Laboratories.

Endpoints used in clinical practice and phase II studies including MRI, invasive right heart catheterisation and field walk test will be compared to pulmonary artery pressure, cardiac output, heart rate and physical activity derived from implanted devices to evaluate the capacity of the devices to provide an early indication of clinical efficacy.

If successful this will validate a means for remote, personalised therapy and decentralised clinical studies.

VIRTU-4HE: Virtual (computed) fractional flow reserve: implications for the provision of healthcare

Congratulations also to Insigneo Fellow Professor Julian Gunn on his recent £220k BHF grant award to for "VIRTU-4HE: Virtual (computed) fractional flow reserve: implications for the provision of healthcare" contributed to by Ian Halliday, Rod Hose, Thaison Tong (Health economist, ScHARR), Paul Morris, Sue Smith and Alex Wilkinson (Insigneo Commercialisation Manager).

This is a study into the impact of coronary flow modelling upon how we manage patients with coronary disease, and the implications for the future - particularly how it will affect downstream costs - re-classifying lesions as more or less significant than seen on the angiogram, implying more or less revascularisation, reduced requirements for other tests, better quality of life.

Invitation to submit: Artificial Intelligence in Cardiothoracic Imaging - a new era of automation

Cardiothoracic diseases are a major healthcare burden worldwide. Imaging plays a key role in the diagnosis and management of cardiac and respiratory diseases, and imaging investigations are increasingly relied upon in practice. Only a small amount of the imaging data available is utilised, and diagnoses are often based on subjective visual interpretations or manual measurements that can vary across hospitals. Major challenges exist in terms of lack of sensitivity of imaging diagnostic measures, qualitatively defined disease classification and inaccurate disease severity assessment. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) may allow the automation of quantitative parameters that may improve imaging assessments in the near future. 

There is an urgent need for explainability (XAI), optimization and generalisation in AI systems which can deliver feasible clinical solutions to improve patient assessments. The main topics of this Special Issue may include:

a. The development and utilisation of computer vision¹, statistics and AI systems for the following clinical challenges:

1. Improved diagnosis of cardiothoracic diseases;
2. Improved clinical markers for prognosis prediction;

b. The Special Issue will feature work in AI development including but not limited to: 

1. Delivering new methods and techniques of explainability using experts guidance;
2. Optimising the performance of existing AI systems;
3. Generalising the adaptation of existing AI systems in multi-modality, multi-hospital datasets.

¹ Computer vision tasks include but are not limited to semantic segmentation, classification, registration, and statistical regression.

Dr. Andrew J. Swift
Dr. Michail Mamalakis
Guest Editors

Guest Lectures, Conferences & Seminars

Insigneo events

3 March
Insigneo research theme workshop: Smart devices (15:00 - 16:30)

18 March
Insigneo Seminar: Applications of biomechanics and modeling in personalized medicine

29 March
Insigneo research theme workshop: Computational Medicine (11:00 - 12:30)

26th April
Insigneo research theme workshop: Biomedical Imaging (11:00 - 12:30)

24 May
Insigneo research theme workshop: Healthcare data  (11:00 - 12:30)

23 June
Insigneo research theme workshop: Biomaterials/Biomechanics/Cell engineering (14:30 - 16:00)

8 July
Insigneo Showcase - save the date!

20 September
Insigneo research theme workshop: Smart devices (10:30 - 12:00)

18 October
Insigneo research theme workshop: Computational Medicine (10:30 - 12:00)

22 November
Insigneo research theme workshop: Biomedical Imaging (11:00 - 12:30)

20 December
Insigneo research theme workshop: Healthcare data/AI (11:00 - 12:30)

Other events

15 - 16 February
Avicenna Day

16 February
Mobilise-D Wednesday Webinar

17 February
RSE Lunchbytes: High Performance Computing (HPC) at Sheffield and Beyond

17 February
N8 CIR: Twitter Data Analysis for Digital Health Research

18 February
10:00 IICD, Department Research in Progress Meeting – Cardiovascular Disease: Karan Govindpani Kugeln 'Characterising A Novel Cerebrovascular Endothelial Membrane Behaviour in Zebrafish'. Please contact Sarah Black (sarah.black@sheffield.ac.uk) to arrange access.

22 February
HELSI Bites: The inflammatory link between heart disease and brain health

23 February
14:00 IICD Seminar Series: Dr Pedro Moura Alves, Ludwig Cancer Center, Oxford
'AhR sensing bacterial quorum during infection' Please contact Sarah Black (sarah.black@sheffield.ac.uk) to arrange access.

25 February
10:00 IICD, Department Research in Progress Meeting – Imaging Theme:
Steven Reynolds 'New experiments and upgrades in the preclinical MRI facility',
Briana Chapple from Elevate 'Providing effective feedback to students (PGT and PGR)' Please contact Sarah Black (sarah.black@sheffield.ac.uk) to arrange access.

25 February
13:00 Department of Oncology and Metabolism (Bone&Joint theme): Ralph Muller
'Bone Microstructural Imaging: From Mechanics to Mechanomics' Please contact Sarah Black (sarah.black@sheffield.ac.uk) to arrange access.

28 February
Sano Seminars: Mario Cannataro, Dipartimento di Scienze Mediche e Chirurgiche, Università Magna Graecia di Catanzaro, Italy

3 March
Healthy Lifespan Institute: Consumerism, Health and the Lifespan

9 March
HELSI Bites: Boosting mitochondrial health in age related disease

17 March
RSE Lunchbytes: Software engineering in High Energy / Particle Physics

21 March
HELSI Bites: Bilingualism and the brain: can learning a language boost memory across the lifespan?

25 March
11th Annual Mellanby Centre Research Day

28 March - 1 April
N8 CIR: Digital Research Infrastructure Skills Retreat

23 - 27 May
VPH Institute -  6th Summer School: Models & Simulations for highly multifactorial disorders

26 - 29 June 
27th Congress of the European Society of Biomechanics in Porto, Portugal

6 - 8 July
BRS22 - abstract deadline 7 March 2022

10 - 14 July
9th World Congress of Biomechanics (WCB 2022)

5 September
RSE Conference 2022, Newcastle

6 - 9 September
VPH2022 Conference:  Digital twins for personalised treatment development and clinical trials - abstract deadline 18 March 2022

8 - 9 September 
BioMedEng22, UCL

21 - 23 October
Brainhack Krakow 2022 – the satellite event of the Neuronus Forum 2022

For a full list of upcoming events visit: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/insigneo/overview/events

Publications 

Research output affiliated to Insigneo in Scopus (please ensure papers are affiliated to the Insigneo Institute by including the words "Insigneo Institute for in silico Medicine"):

Improving the Hip Fracture Risk Prediction with a Statistical Shape-and-Intensity Model of the Proximal Femur (Annals of Biomedical Engineering) A. Aldieri, P. Bhattacharya, M. Paggiosi, R. Eastell, A. L. Audenino, C. Bignardi, U. Morbiducci, M. Terzini 

A governing equation for rotor and wavelet number in human clinical ventricular fibrillation: Implications for sudden cardiac death (Heart Rhythm) D. Dharmaprani, E. V. Jenkins, J. X. Quah, A. Lahiri, K. Tiver, L. Mitchell, C. P. Bradley, M.Hayward, D. J. Paterson, P. Taggart , R. H Clayton, M. P Nash, A. N. Ganesan

Cezanne is a critical regulator of pathological arterial remodelling by targeting β-catenin signalling (Cardiovascular research) W. An, L. A. Luong, N. P. Bowden, M. Yang, W. Wu, X. Zhou, C. Liu, K. Niu, J. Luo, C. Zhang, X. Sun, R. Poston, L. Zhang, P. C. Evans, Q. Xiao

A Novel Three-Dimensional Computational Method to Assess Rod Contour Deformation and to Map Bony Fusion in a Lumbopelvic Reconstruction After En-Bloc Sacrectomy (Frontiers in Surgery) P. E. Eltes, M. Turbucz, J. Fayad, F.Bereczki, G. Szőke, T. Terebessy, D. Lacroix, P. P. Varga, A. Lazary

Effectiveness of Global Optimisation and Direct Kinematics in Predicting Surgical Outcome in Children with Cerebral Palsy (Life) C. F. Hayford, E. Pratt, J. P. Cashman, O. G. Evans, C. Mazzà

A quality control check to ensure comparability of stereophotogrammetric data between session and systems (Sensors) K. Scott,T. Bonci, L. Alcock, E. Buckley, C.Hansen, E. Gazit, L. Schwickert, A. Cereatti, C. Mazzà and on behalf of the Mobilise-D Consortium

Biological heterogeneity in idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension identified through unsupervised transcriptomic profiling of whole blood (Nature Communications) S. Kariotis, E. Jammeh, E. M. Swietlik, J. A. Pickworth, C. J. Rhodes, P. Otero, J. Wharton, J. Iremonger, M. J. Dunning, D. Pandya, T. S. Mascarenhas, N. Errington, A. A. R.Thompson, C.E. Romanoski, F. Rischard, J. G. N. Garcia, J. X.-J. Yuan, T.-H. S. An, A. A. Desai, G. Coghlan, J. Lordan, P. A. Corris, L. S. Howard, R. Condliffe, D. G. Kiely, C. Church, J. Pepke-Zaba, M. Toshner, S. Wort, S. Gräf, N. W. Morrell, M. R. Wilkins, A. Lawrie, D. Wang & UK National PAH Cohort Study Consortium